People are calling a $700 AI gadget the worst piece of tech they’ve ever used — even though it was touted as the ‘iPhone killer’
Reviews are in for a small $700 portable computer, less than 5 square inches in size, made by two former Apple employees who promised a breakthrough “iPhone killer.”
And they haven’t been kind: Humane’s AI Pin has been called “The Worst Product I’ve Ever Reviewed” and gets a low score of 4 out of 10 from major tech publications.
The device – which is worn on the user’s lapel, responds to voice commands via AI and projects a small screen onto the hand – has been criticized for hardware overheating within ‘a few minutes’, AI giving ‘incorrect answers’ and worse .
Now, Humane employees and engineers have admitted that the AI Pin, which also requires a $24 monthly subscription, is “sometimes frustrating” and that the harsh reviews are “honest” and “solid.”
It remains to be seen whether the public will prefer to tap their chest with an object instead of taking their phone out of their pocket.
Some tech industry boosters lashed out at the influential YouTuber reviewer Brand Brownleewhose negative review of the AI Pin has been viewed 3.7 million times, accuses him of “carelessness” for “potentially killing someone else’s budding project” with his criticism.
But Humane’s head of new media, Sam Sheffer, said Brownlee’s review, titled “,” “was all fair and valid criticism, both the good and the bad.”
“Feedback is a gift,” Sheffer said, “we reflect and we listen and we learn and we keep building.”
Brownlee turned down the AI wearable because it not only often took too long to respond to his questions, but also often returned with wrong answers.
And these software issues weren’t offset by high-end hardware: In addition to the device overheating problem, he noted that AI Pin’s battery life varied strangely between charges and that the device’s built-in camera produced low-quality images.
Major product reviewers at Wired, Fast Company, and The Verge all gave the device low scores and cited similar issues.
Wired added that the projector, designed to project a futuristic screen onto the palm of your hand, was “annoying to interact with and impossible to see in daylight.”
“Every time I went out,” Wired’s review said, “I asked him maybe three to four things, some of it just to try out a feature. I would then become disappointed with the results.’
Wrong answers from AI Pin, a not uncommon feature of many of today’s AI chatbots, made an embarrassing appearance early in the product’s marketing.
It’s much cheaper than other similar everyday products that support AI, such as Meta’s £245 Rayban smart glasses with built-in chatbot and the £550 Humane AI Pin (pictured), a brooch-like device that projects a screen with a digital assistant at hand
In a promotional video released last November to launch the product, the device made not just one, but two blunders when Humane’s founders, ex-Apple employees Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, asked the device fairly simple questions.
In the video, Chaudhri asks the device, “When is the next solar eclipse and where is the best place to see it?”
AI Pin costs $699, and this doesn’t include an additional monthly fee if you want people to receive calls with it
And in response, the AI declares that the next solar eclipse will occur on April 8, 2024, and that the best places to see it are Exmouth, Australia and East Timor – when in fact the event was only visible across America in the Western Hemisphere.
One of the AI Pin’s most exotic and sci-fi design features, the ‘Laser Ink’ digital projector, which beams a screen onto the palm of your hand, proved more frustrating than the Star Wars hologram features it conjured up in customers’ minds . .
To start the projector, the user taps the AI Pin touchpad or tells the AI to show me something. As a reviewer at The edge noted, the next step involves awkwardly holding the hand just a few inches away from the ribcage.
“The projector’s 720p resolution is crap, and it only projects green light,” said The Verge reviewer, “but it projects enough text onto your hand unless you’re in bright light, and then it’s just about invisible .’
The company’s most generous reviewer compared Humane’s AI Pin to the first generation of the Apple Watch, which “only got good in Series 3.”
“If Humane can make some major improvements by the second or third generation,” they say said“I think this AI-powered wearable that hangs on your shirt could have a future.”
The company’s co-founders promise exactly that: to iterate and improve on this first generation of AI Pin.
Bongiorno and Chaudhri from Humane told us Business insider that this first version of the wearable’s hardware and software is just the ‘beginning of the story’.
“Today is not the first chapter, but the first page,” they said.
“We have an ambitious roadmap with software refinements, new features, additional partnerships and our SDK (i.e. ‘software development kit’). All of this makes your AI Pin smarter and more powerful over time.”