Reviews are in for a tiny $700 wearable computer, less than 2 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’ garnering low 4-out-of-10 scored from major tech publications.
The device — which is worn on the user’s lapel, answers spoken commands via AI, and projects a tiny screen onto their hand — has been criticized for hardware that overheats in just ‘a couple of minutes,’ AI that delivers ‘incorrect answers’ and worse.
Now, Humane’s employees and engineers have admitted that the AI Pin, which also requires a $24 monthly subscription plan, is ‘frustrating sometimes’ and that the harsh reviews have been ‘honest’ and ‘solid.’
It’s yet to be seen if the public will prefer tapping an object on their chest as opposed to pulling their phone out of their pocket
Some tech industry boosters lashed out at influential YouTuber reviewer Marques Brownlee, whose negative review of the AI Pin has 3.7 million views, accusing him of ‘carelessness’ for ‘potentially killing someone else’s nascent project’ with his critique.
But Humane’s head of new media, Sam Sheffer, said Brownlee’s review, titled ‘ ,’ was ‘all fair and valid critiques, both the good and the bad.’
‘Feedback is a gift,’ Sheffer said, ‘We reflect and we listen and we learn and we continue building.’
Brownlee knocked the AI wearable for not only often taking too long to respond to his questions but often returning with wrong answers.
And those software issues were not compensated for by quality hardware: in addition to device overheating issue, he noted that AI Pin’s battery life varied oddly between charges and the device’s embedded camera yielded low quality images.
Major produce reviewers at Wired, Fast Company and The Verge all gave the device low scores citing similar issues.
Wired added that the projector, designed to beam a futuristic screen onto the palm of your hand was ‘annoying to interact with and is impossible to see in daylight.’
‘Whenever I went out with it,’ Wired’s review said, ‘I’d ask it maybe three to four things, partly just to try a feature out. I’d then get disappointed with the results.’
Wrong answers from AI Pin, a not uncommon feature from many of today’s AI chatbots, stumbled embarrassingly into view early in the product’s marketing.
It is far cheaper than other similar AI-enable day-to-day products, 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 on to your hand
In a promotional video released to launch the product last November, the device made not just one, but two blunders as 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 eclipse and where is the best place to see it?’
AI Pin is retailing at $699, and this doesn’t include an additional monthly price if you want it to phone people
And in response, the AI declares the next solar eclipse will be on April 8 2024 and that the best places to see it are Exmouth, Australia and East Timor — when the event was actually only visible across the Americas in the western hemisphere.
One of the AI Pin’s most exotic and sci-fi design features, its ‘Laser Ink’ digital projector, which beams a screen onto the palm of your hand, proved to be more frustrating than the Star Wars hologram features it conjured in customers’ minds.
To initiate the projector, the user taps the AI Pin touchpad or tells the AI to ‘show me’ something. As a reviewer at The Verge noted, the next step is awkwardly cupping one’s hand just a few inches away from their ribcage.
‘The projector’s 720p resolution is crap, and it only projects green light,’ The Verge reviewer said, ‘but it does a good-enough job of projecting text onto your hand unless you’re in bright light, and then it’s just about invisible.’
The company’s most generous reviewer’s likened Humane’s AI Pin to the first generation of the Apple Watch, which ‘didn’t get good until Series 3.’
‘If Humane can make some big improvements by the second or third generation,’ they said, ‘I think this AI-powered wearable that hangs off your shirt could have a future.’
For it’s part, the company’s co-founders are promising exactly that: to iterate and improve on this first generation of AI Pin.
Humane’s Bongiorno and Chaudhri told Business Insider that this first version of the wearable’s hardware and software is just the ‘beginning of the story.’
‘Today marks 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 will enable your AI Pin to become smarter and more powerful over time.’
