From its headquarters in San Francisco (California), Thursday, November 9, the American start-up Humane presented the AI Pin, a new type of electronic device, which is attached to the chest and controlled by the voice. We can, for example, ask him to summarize the messages received, to find specific information in his e-mail box or to respond briefly to a practical question by searching the Internet. The AI Pin draws on recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), poised to take voice assistants to a new level.
Operating a device by voice is more annoying outdoors than in the peace and quiet of a home. To avoid a potential cacophony in public spaces with the AI Pin’s responses, you can connect a Bluetooth headset to it, but you will often have to speak to it out loud since it is a product “voice first” (voice control takes precedence), as the company declares to the specialized media TechCrunch.
Projections on the hand
However, certain simple functions can be controlled more discreetly, thanks to a mini laser projector capable of displaying information on the palm of the hand. It should therefore allow you to control your music, display the weather or read a message.
Quite narrow and monochrome, it nevertheless does not a priori offer the same pleasure nor the same density of information as the screen of a mobile phone − it cannot display the classic applications of our smartphones. According to demonstrations made by the company, it can be controlled by moving your hand down, up, right and left, then using gesture commands. The AI Pin detects them using a depth sensor.
The device also has a 13-megapixel camera capable of taking photos. When it is active, or when the microphone opens, a large LED lights up to warn people nearby. The device is not always listening, assures Humane: you have to press a small button before speaking to it. Its camera is capable of analyzing images to track, for example, our calorie consumption, with an effectiveness that remains to be proven.
The AI Pin should be marketed at the beginning of 2024 at a price of 700 dollars (around 655 euros). To use it, you will need to subscribe to a monthly subscription of $24 including access to the telephone network and the use of various paid AI. Humane hopes to sell 100,000 copies, according to TechCrunch, which reflects the ambition to currently reach a small sample ofearly adopters, consumers most likely to purchase new products.
Initially, the company does not expect the AI Pin to completely replace our smartphones, as it concedes in the American magazine Wired. But its claimed objective remains to make us less dependent on our screens.
Apple alumni
Humane is a start-up created in 2018 by a couple of former Apple employees: Imran Chaudhri (who worked there on the user experience of the very first iPhone, according to New York Times) and Bethany Bongiorno (who was part of the teams responsible for the software parts, notably for the iPhone and iPad). Their team, based in San Francisco, includes many ex-employees of the Apple brand who have worked on its smartphone, notes the American daily.
Independent, Humane, however, already has significant support: it has raised $230 million since its creation and counts as its first shareholder the founder of OpenAI, Sam Altman (15% of the capital), alongside the founders (13% each) . The company also prides itself on having established certain partnerships: with OpenAI (the publisher of ChatGPT), but also with Microsoft, for its data processing capabilities through its cloud subsidiary, or with the automobile manufacturer Volvo, with a view to to work on possible integration into vehicles.
If the market welcomes the AI Pin, the tool could quickly find competition from a device more familiar to consumers: the smartphone, combined with a simple Bluetooth headset and supported by a more efficient personal assistant, thanks to the addition of more advanced conversational AI.
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Among its competitors are also connected glasses, an object with a fairly similar spirit, which has however struggled to penetrate the general public market since the launch of the Google Glass research project in 2011. Compared to the AI Pin, connected glasses have faults: they are less discreet, their style can be displeasing, they can obstruct the view and weigh on the nose. But they also have advantages: they make less noise thanks to their speaker very close to the ear and display larger, color images.