Humanized AI Pin first impression: charming or unrealistic?

Humane is injecting the energy and enthusiasm driven by Red Bull into its AI Pin showcase at MWC. The compact, square device creates a sense of curiosity, even after it’s been on display for months.

The Humane AI Pin, created by two former Apple executives, Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, first appeared in the tech world last year, but is only available for pre-order and is expected to ship in March. Priced at $700, it promised to free you from the distractions of your smartphone screen and provide an avant-garde approach to computing that could be very cool, but at the same time be quite limiting as a standalone device.

“It essentially makes you more focused and gives you a sense of freedom, primarily because the AI ​​operating system we built on top of Android core allows it to really do a lot of the work for you and really engage the AI, so you don’t have to You do a lot of that manually,” Chaudhri told us while demonstrating Pin, the human-like AI, to my colleagues and me. Android Authority Colleagues stay away from crowded booths.

From what I gather from our chat, the basic idea behind AI Pin is that it gives you a screen-free experience. You click on it to summon the AI ​​and issue voice commands, asking it to read your emails, summarize your texts, get your calendar events, look up information on the internet, recognize objects and scenes in front of you, and more. The AI ​​can answer in a less-than-human voice or use a tiny green laser projector to project text onto your hand.

Humane’s CosmOS, the core software of AI Pin, leverages several large-scale language models, including Open AI’s ChatGPT. If you’re like me and you’re wondering how it handles the infamous AI hallucinations that lead to inaccurate information, the company has a solution.

“Article about hallucinations, Open AI and we have a lot of work going on. The way our architecture works is we go out and find the right thing you’re looking for. If that’s information you want, we’ll try to get it to you The best and most accurate answer. When you graduate directly from LLM, there is an illusion. We don’t get it directly from LLM but from the wider internet,” Chaudhri explains. It all seems radical and well thought out until the unrealistic starts to set in.

What disturbs me is that there is no app support on the Humane AI Pin. The company has a number of partners including Slack, Tidal Music, Microsoft and Google. So if you want to play music, you can only do it through Tidal. If you want to store photos and videos taken with the 13MP camera, you can only back them up to Humane’s own cloud service and sync them with Google Photos. Essentially, if you want human-like AI Pins to interact with or get information from other apps you use every day, you’re out of luck, at least for now.

“There will be more (partners) coming,” Bongiorno said.

“We do know that people want things like Spotify, they want WhatsApp, and those are things on our priority list and our list of things we want to bring to the platform. We’re also developing an SDK, It allows developers to build for our platform. We think that’s a very critical part of our software and the direction we’re going,” she said.

While the lack of app support is disconcerting, so is the nature of the device itself. AI-powered voice responses or even text projected on your hand aren’t the most private ways to use your personal device. If you want the pin’s response to be truly secure from prying eyes and prying ears, you must pair it with Bluetooth headphones or earbuds.

Then there’s the case of network connectivity and portability. Humane AI Pin must be used with a subscription that includes a standalone T-Mobile phone plan and its unique phone number. If you want your PIN to receive and read messages to you, the sender must send the text to the PIN’s phone number, not the primary number you use on your phone. Calls, messages, and other notifications cannot be transferred from the phone to the PIN.

This pin is a stand-alone device that works independently. It’s not an accessory like a smartwatch or smart glasses. Additionally, if you decide to pass or sell your AI Pin to someone, you won’t be able to do so until that company starts supporting the feature.

“We know that over time, people will want to share their Pins. That’s not something we support right now. But it’s something we know people want, and we’ll add more there over time. Versatile,” Bongiorno said.

All in all, it’s hard to make a case for humanizing AI Pins at the moment. It’s an expensive investment for a device that won’t completely replace a phone, and will certainly become a secondary device for buyers. Best of all, it connects you to a subscription service, which currently doesn’t offer much in the way of service partnerships. Additionally, much of the AI ​​processing on phones happens off-device and requires an internet connection. So if your connection is poor or you find yourself in a dead zone, you won’t be able to take full advantage of the AI ​​Pin’s features.

Is this something I would pay $700 for? The answer is no, as I had limited access to AI Pins at MWC 2024. We’ll have a chance to review the device soon, which might change my mind. That said, I do find this pin exciting and wouldn’t mind having it rocking on my lapel for a while, just for the novelty.