After months of demos and referrals, tech company Humane officially started selling Ai Pin on November 16. The company was founded by Imran Choudhury and Bethany Bongiorno, who previously spent years at Apple, where they worked on developing the distinctive software elements that today form the foundation of iOS, watchOS, or even macOS. Choudhury and Bongiorno decided to create a smarter, more personal future together, committing themselves to the fact that their company, called Humane, develops new devices not for the people of today, but for the people of tomorrow. Humanity aims to create products and technologies
- that are born of good intentions;
- That reconnects us with ourselves, with each other, and with the world around us;
- Which are built on trust, and have interactions that seem magical and bring happiness;
According to them, we, the people, deserve more technology. The result of this approach was Ai Pin, the company’s first product, which, after several months of waiting, will soon be in users’ hands – or, more precisely, on their clothes.
The future is today
Ai Pin has become a wearable gadget worth $700 (about 240,000 Hungarian forints) and consisting of two parts: the main unit itself and a battery magnetically attached to it, which is placed on the back of the main unit – with the help of which we can attach it to a shirt, jacket or any other surface . However, to use the device, it is not enough just to buy it. Humane has partnered with T-Mobile to give Ai Pin its own phone number and mobile Internet connection; However, a $24 subscription is necessary to use it.
A Qualcomm Snapdragon chip runs inside the device, but Humane didn’t reveal the exact version, so there probably won’t be more information about it until it starts shipping in early 2024. However, what you can find out is that the 54-gram device has a wide camera The 13-megapixel angle and a laser projector that can display different contents, for example, in the palm of your hand, is just as futuristic as it seems at first.
But what can it be used for?
However, the question arises as to what is the practical use of Ai Pin. As it turns out, the Pin’s primary function will be to communicate with AI models through software the company calls AI Mic. Humane’s press release references both Microsoft and OpenAI, and previous reports indicate that Pin will work primarily with GPT-4, and access to ChatGPT is actually a core feature of the device, according to Humane. By the way, the operating system running on Pin, called Cosmos, is designed to automatically route queries to the right devices instead of requiring you to download and manage apps.
So what Humane is trying to achieve with Ai Pin is basically to remove all the “interface clutter”. Ai Pin won’t have a home screen or a lot of settings and accounts to manage; The idea is just talk to the pin or tap it, say what you want to do or know, and it will happen automatically. In addition, Ai Pin is able to send messages and voice calls, a “catch me” function that summarizes the content of incoming emails and messages, but, for example, if we hold a plate of food in front of the camera, Ai Pin can check the information Food too. Real-time translation is also a given, but beyond that, the tool’s primary goal is to be a kind of LLM-based wearable search engine.
This is just the beginning
Overall, it is clear that Ai Pin is the beginning of a larger project that will become larger and larger as the core models grow. 2023 has clearly been the year of AI, just in the last few months we have made several breakthroughs in this field, so Humane and Ai Pin itself have a bright future – the only question is how well they will be able to accommodate users. As mentioned, the Ai Pin is now available for pre-order from the Humane website; The company will begin delivering the first devices in the first half of 2024.
(Cover image: Humane’s Ai Pin in white. Image: Humane)
