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A Wearable, Talking AI Personal Assistant That Projects Info Onto Your Hand

Humane's Ai Pin

By Rain Noe - November 14, 2023

in Tech

A startup called Humane is launching their Ai Pin, a wearable button that essentially contains an AI personal assistant, camera, speaker and projector.

Eye-rolling aside, to the designers' credit the device confounds expectations; I always assumed digital assistants would evolve and be contained within smartphones. However, being a wearable, the Ai Pin is instantly accessed, with no digging in pockets or purses. At first this sounds like a trivial difference, but the UX advantage becomes more clear in the demo video:

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That it projects information onto your hand is an interesting solution. I suppose this also limits the complexity of the answers the device can provide, as your hand only has so much real estate. (I do wonder if this will lead to Twitterification, whereby complicated issues must be oversimplified into short bursts, and those grossly oversimplified summations are then accepted as the full reality.)

The Ai Pin sticks to your clothing via a magnet on the inside of your garment. This inner magnet also contains the battery. It comes with two of these, so that you can swap it out on-the-go, rather than having to stop and charge.

The Ai Pin can snap photos and take notes on command. Those are sent to a personal Humane interface annoyingly called ".Center," with a freaking period in front of it, that you can access from a web browser.

The company will begin taking orders this Thursday, November 16th. The device costs $700, and you'd also need to pay for a $24 monthly subscription, which gives the device its own phone number, unlimited connectivity and cloud storage.

I'm off to watch some Black Mirror episodes so I can see how this will all go wrong.

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Dee An

a year ago

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"...complicated issues must be oversimplified into short bursts, and those grossly oversimplified summations are then accepted as the full reality"
Er yeah, okay. In reality, user-actionable information should very often be concise. Your bus departs in 17 minutes. Walk in THIS direction to the bus station. I don't want or need a video of the bus, or a twenty page pdf about the history of the bus company.

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Emma Hover

a year ago

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A $700 device that is magnetically connected to your clothes, seems like the most easy to steal wearable devised yet. It also sounds like it wouldn't be as comforting to interact with than the Bose sunglasses (where others really don't hear your speakers, only you do) or
Airpods, unless you like the world to hear your conversations.

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Daniel Jordache

a year ago

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DOA

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John Emm

a year ago

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This is a solution in search of a problem.

“However, being a wearable, the Ai Pin is instantly accessed, with no digging in pockets or purses. At first this sounds like a trivial difference, but the UX advantage becomes more clear in the demo video:” Hilarious! I raised my wrist with my Apple Watch on it and asked Siri what it knows about this…

See my point? One does not need to wear a device with a front-facing camera (thoughts and prayers, Glassholes) that responds out loud (people around them will LOVE that!) to everything in order to have convenient access to an AI assistant. Sure, Siri needs improvement, but let’s be serious: $700 plus $300/year is a non-starter. The cherry-picked use cases in the video are not frequent enough for most folks to justify this.

Regarding the camera (“capture this”), how is a clothing mounted device going to have a good point of view all the time? Cameras are hand-held for reasons.

Going back to the UI, this requires raising one’s hand and touching the device. A Watch can invoke Siri with a simple arm raise—no touching. Apple’s new finger tap gesture reduces touches even further.

As for this being audible, I can hardly believe you gloss over that. Earbuds, you say? LOL. Nobody with a smartphone will want to wear earbuds dedicated to a device that isn’t their phone.

I could go on, but why? This feels like a college design project that, while clever, ignores reality in several ways.

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Kyle Wolfe

a year ago

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This reminds me of Twiki from Buck Rogers. That robot wore a smart computer named Theo. This is sort of a reverse Cap Camera too. I am sure there would be a protocol to start the camera and mic if you were being pulled over. Once cloud storage becomes infinite these things will record everything though. That is just like a Black Mirror episode. I kind of like it and hate it at the same time.

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