AI-powered portable gadgets that can communicate with chatbots directly without requiring apps or a touchscreen are about to be released into the market. Are they a revolution or just the emperor’s new clothes?
Envision the following scenario: you are strolling through a park or riding the bus when you realize you have forgotten a crucial duty. You had an email to send, a meeting to attend, or a lunch date with a friend to set up. You just speak out loud what you’ve forgotten, and the little gadget perched on your cheast or perched on your nasal bridge delivers the message, summarizes the meeting, or sends your friend a lunch invitation—all without missing a beat. You won’t ever need to poke your smartphone’s screen because the work has already been done.
A rising number of IT businesses are aiming to achieve this kind of utopian comfort using artificial intelligence. ChatGPT and other generative AI chatbots gained enormous traction last year as social media platforms like Snapchat, messaging applications like Slack, and search engines like Google scrambled to incorporate the technology into their platforms. However, while AI add-ons are now commonplace in software and apps, the same generative technology is also attempting to enter the hardware market as the first AI-powered consumer products appear and compete with our smartphones for market share.
The AI Pin from California startup Humane will be among the first to launch. It’s a wearable gadget that fits on your shirt and is only a little larger than a tin of Vaseline. It can make calls, snap images, send texts, and play music. But it lacks a screen and doesn’t support apps. Rather, it projects a straightforward interface onto your outstretched palm using a laser, and its built-in artificial intelligence chatbot can be told to perform web searches or respond to questions like ChatGPT’s.
According to Virginia-based consultant Tiffany Jana, who pre-ordered the device before its initial US launch in April (Humane hasn’t yet revealed a full global release timetable), “I am planning to train Ai Pin to be my assistant and facilitate my writing and creative work.” She hopes it can replace an accompanying photographer and translator because she travels a lot. “I no longer have the large crew and all of the assistance that helped me in the past. I’ve always been interested in technology, and I like ChatGPT.
In the meantime, Chinese firms TCL and Oppo have followed suit with AI eyewear, while Facebook parent company Meta has already released a set of smart glasses with AI in collaboration with Ray-Ban. They are all advertised for their ability to link to an AI chatbot that can react to voice instructions, and they all do much the same functions as the AI Pin.
If everything here seems a lot like what your living room Alexa or smartphone’s voice assistant can already do, that’s because it is. According to David Lindlbauer, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute in Pennsylvania, “using AI in new devices is standard even nowadays.” “Everyone uses Apple Siri, Google’s recommendations, or smart app suggestions when interacting with their phones.” He claims that the new and upcoming gadgets aim to integrate their AI capabilities in “a less obtrusive and more ubiquitous manner,” which makes a difference.
The upcoming Pendant from US firm Rewind and the Tab AI from software developer Avi Schiffmann are the best examples of this design goal. These little devices are meant to hang around your neck and passively record everything you say and hear during the day. Later, they will summarize and translate the key points so you may review them whenever it’s convenient for you. In essence, they are productivity tools that combine generative AI elements from other sources into a stand-alone gadget.
An intent issue?
However, why would you want a gadget that only duplicates the functions of your smartphone? somewhat to extricate oneself from its undesirable components. Humane is promoting the Ai Pin as a solution to reduce smartphone addiction by providing the same necessary features without the addicting apps that force us to browse endlessly.
Using the analogy of a bottle, Christian Montag, the head of molecular psychology at Ulm University in Germany, states that an alcoholic is addicted to the contents of the bottle. He claims that social media companies in particular frequently have an incentive to purposefully extend our screen time to show us more advertisements or collect our personal information. Even while studies have indicated that using a smartphone in grayscale mode decreases user retention, eliminating the screen may have a greater impact.
Although this scaling back may seem paradoxical given the tech industry’s insatiable demand for new features and devices, it’s maybe not as strange as it might initially seem. According to Lindlbauer, “because many people wear headphones throughout the day, it is perfectly feasible to move away from the temptation to doom-scroll towards technology that provides constant but unobtrusive access to the digital world.”
However, wearable technology has a mixed past. With the release of Google Glass in 2013, Google attempted to gain traction for the concept of smart spectacles. It was envisioned as a smartphone substitute that could react to voice queries and offer information to users via a lens display, even though it lacked an AI chatbot.
“A lot of customers thought Google Glass was outdated and compared it to cyborgs,” says Jannek Sommer, an assistant professor in the business and management department at the University of Southern Denmark. Similar issues also beset the first version of the Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch, whose marketing mistakenly linked it to the sci-fi devices seen in Hollywood movies. According to Sommer, “the industry gradually realized that their positioning was off after some years of following this approach.”
The Ai Pin, after all, is all about rounded corners and simple form, and Meta’s collaboration with Ray-Ban speaks to the kind of fashion credibility the brand aspires to achieve. However, appearances aren’t everything, even with wearable technology. According to Sommer, “The wearables market is driven by hype, novelty, and fashion, but a serious barrier appears to be the industry’s inability to consistently provide consumers with an experience of practical value.” “And this highlights how young technology is still today.”
This was never more evident than in the video announcing the Ai Pin’s debut. When asked to calculate the protein content of a handful of almonds, it accurately misrepresented the nuts’ nutritional value. Subsequently, the revelation provided incorrect advice regarding the optimal location to observe an impending solar eclipse. All chatbots experience these “hallucinations,” in which an AI model provides misleading information or fabricates details. These incidents also caused problems for Google’s AI chatbot, Bard, after its launch last year.
However, wearable AI devices still have purpose-related concerns, even if these flaws are resolved. The newest models of smartphones from Samsung, Google, and other manufacturers now come with According to Reece Hayden, senior analyst at international technology intelligence firm ABI Research, “the majority of effort in the foreseeable future will be focused on integrating generative AI into existing form factors, as this will offer more obvious commercial opportunities.” Therefore, it may be instructive that Imran Chaudhri, the CEO of Humane, has blatantly declined to disclose how much time he spends on his Ai Pin as opposed to his ordinary phone. We’re likely to mostly engage with technology through our laptops, desktop computers, and cellphones until we encounter an AI application that requires a different kind of device.
Imagining larger
However, conversations regarding those broader uses are beginning to take place. Some believe that the technology’s true promise is not in its ability to be incorporated into current platforms, but rather in its potential to drastically alter how we use them. “You won’t have to use different apps for different tasks,” articulated the idea in a blog post by former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. “You’ll simply tell your device, in everyday language, what you want to do,” and then let it determine whatever platforms, apps, and data it needs to finish the task you’ve given it.
The R1 will implement this concept in a trial fashion. The R1, a handheld gadget made by California AI firm Rabbit, functions a lot like a potent voice assistant and has a slight appearance similar to a portable game console. But unlike other wearable technology, it’s meant to communicate directly with your phone’s apps on your behalf, as opposed to merely connecting to an AI chatbot that produces inert responses to your orders. Therefore, the R1 is intended to serve as a single interface for all of your gadgets, a core application that gives you control over everything else.
According to Jesse Lyu, CEO of Rabbit, “We’re not building products for new use cases; we’re creating what we feel are better and more intuitive ways to address existing use cases.” The R1, in his words, is a “digital companion” that will enhance your smartphone’s functionality rather than replace it.
The R1’s introduction later this year will demonstrate the effectiveness of that strategy. However, similar experimental devices should follow. According to reports, former Apple chief designer Jony Ive and Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the firm that created ChatGPT, are already discussing potential hardware solutions. Currently, a plethora of firms and prominent figures in Silicon Valley are vying to develop the chips and processors required for these novel gadgets to fuel their artificial intelligence models.
The globally linked, incredibly functional, and intuitively operated glass rectangles that most of us carry around in our pockets will be difficult for these AI devices to compete with, no matter what shape they ultimately take. Even smartphones have a limited lifespan. According to Lindlbauer, “the smartphone has only been with us for about 15 years.” “I don’t want to think that in [another] 15 years, smartphones will be used in the same way that they are now, or that they represent the peak of technology.”
