Generative AI Doesn’t Make Hardware Less Hard
After years of development, startup Humane launched a $700 wearable in early April that leans heavily on artificial intelligence. The original pitch for the Ai Pin was that you no longer need to juggle different apps; its operating system can “search for the right AI at the right moment,” allowing it to play music, translate languages, and even tell you how much protein is in a palmful of almonds. And because it doesn’t have a traditional display, the Ai pin was supposed to be a tiny tincture for the disease of screen time; smartphones were on their way out.
The pin has been panned. WIRED’s Julian Chokkattu scored the Ai Pin a 4 out of 10. Popular YouTuber Marques Brownlee complimented the device’s hardware design but still called it “The Worst Product I’ve Ever Reviewed … For Now.” The company has since massaged the message that it’s meant to replace your phone. Humane cofounder and chief executive Bethany Bongiorno has been fastidiously responding to displeased customers—and some fanboys—on Twitter, with apologies, assurances that improvements are coming, and video demos of the gadget’s UI, which replaces your smartphone screen by projecting lasers onto your palm.
Humane appears to have lost the thread on its own product launch, and it’s not alone. The cheaper Rabbit R1, which was sold for $200 as a generative AI “pocket companion” and generated a lot of initial excitement, has now been labeled “underwhelming,” “half-baked,” “undercooked,” and “unreliable.” WIRED’s Chokkattu gave it a 3 out of 10, while some people have questioned the way the device handles logins for outside apps such as Uber.
