Why Humane's AI Pin won't succeed
An innovative new AI hardware appliance is coming soon. Unfortunately, it has zero chance in the consumer market. Here's why.
The world just got new wearable platform — the AI pin. Specifically, a startup called Humane rolled out its $700 AI Pin product, a 55-gram wearable gadget about the size of a book of matches that attaches to your clothing via magnet or clip. The AI Pin’s connectivity costs $24 per month.
The magnetic part, which goes on the inside of your clothing, is also a battery, which can be hot-swapped for a spare charged battery if needed.
The compact device sports a 13MP camera, as well as sensors for measuring light and movement. It’s also got a magnetometer and GPS electronics, as well as WiFi, Bluetooth and mobile broadband capability.
Electronicswise, it’s basically a smartphone without the screen, with a few additional elements that smartphones do not contain.
Instead of a screen, the AI Pin shoots laser light at the palm of your hand when held out in front of the device. The AI Pin recognizes some hand gestures, which enable some control of the device and navigation of the laser-light interface, and also voice commands.
The AI Pin comes with a custom assistant called Ai Mic, which is based on a few LLM-based generative AI services, including ChatGPT. By tapping and holding the touch-screen on front of the Pin, you can talk to this assistant, and get answers back. It also does basic smartphone stuff like sending texts and taking pictures.
You can place an order for the AI Pin starting next week, according to the company. First shipments are expected to begin early next year.
The company is opening the platform to developers, and will have an App Store.
The Humane company is headed by husband-and-wife team Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, who founded Humane in 2018 after working at Apple. They’ve raised $230 million in funding from investors that include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff; Microsoft; and the venture arms of LG, Volvo, and Qualcomm.
Why the AI Pin will fail in the market
I love the fact that someone is trying a whole new wearable platform concept in the market. The innovation is real and the design impressive. And many of the elements of the AI Pin are appealing. For example, the idea of having access to AI, and to some elements of a smartphone, without an addictive and anti-social smartphone screen — or without anything covering your eyes or ears — is a wonderful idea.
The fundamental problem is that AI hardware is a banality. In fact, nearly all hardware is AI hardware. AI is ultimately a cloud service, which requires at minimum hardware that can send and receive text to and from the cloud. A BlackBerry 850 from 1999 could function as AI hardware.
The Humane AI Pin enters a marketplace where there are two general wearable platforms that can serve as AI appliances: The smartwatch and smart glasses. Of these, smart glasses are vastly superior to the AI Pin for several reasons:
Glasses are attached physically to the face and ears. That means the camera looks where you turn your head to look. (You don’t have to pivot your torso to aim the camera). And it means that, instead of the AI Pin’s “bubble of sound” hovering above your chest, you have two tiny stereo bubbles of sound around each ear. The microphones in smart glasses are closer to the face. So all input and all output is closer and more efficient in smart glasses.
Glasses are “normal” and accepted. Pinning things to clothing is unusual and a bit odd. It’s difficult to imagine smart pins going mainstream and being accepted by the public at scale.
Glasses are wearable in more situations. For example, while shirtless on the beach or while wearing a heavy coat in the dead of winter.
I’ve been wearing the Ray-Ban Meta glasses — also an AI appliance — every day since they launched, and they’re amazing to wear. The Meta AI assistant, which responds to and with voice, is very good. Around the time that the AI Pin ships, the Ray-Ban Meta glasses will acquire the ability to (through a promised software update and AI cloud service) recognize landmarks and objects through the glasses’ camera.
The year 2024 will witness the launch of numerous smart glasses products that function brilliantly as AI appliances, and they will be super popular as a category, I predict.
And so Humane finds itself in the unenviable position of launching a highly innovative AI appliance into a market where a superior AI appliance platform — smart glasses — is just about to explode into the mainstream.
My advice to Humane is this: Drop the pin idea and pivot toward glasses. The addition of a laser beam to smart glasses that shows me data on my palm would be a unique feature exclusive to Humane, and give the company a shot at success.
Because of the clear superiority of smart glasses as an AI platform, the AI Pin platform has zero chance to succeed in the market.
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