- Humane soft launched its wearable device Pin this month. It'll start selling them for $699 in 2024.
- A video shared on X shows it took a user "6 pinches and 15 hand wiggles" to send a message.
Humane might have broken the internet with the launch of its AI Pin, but it's probably not going to disrupt the tech world.
A video shared on X shows it took a user "6 pinches and 15 hand wiggles" to send a message. That's 21 seconds to send, "How's it going?" whereas it took me six seconds to shoot out a message with the same wording.
The company launched its buzzy wearable tech in a promotional video this month, which captured the attention of the tech industry.
When its cofounders, a married couple, demonstrated how it works in the video, the AI Pin gave false information twice. Humane's head of new media, Sam Sheffer, said in its Discord server that the errors were caused by a bug and that the issues had been fixed.
The company will start selling the device for $699 in early 2024. The interface projects onto your hand, essentially turning it into a makeshift screen.
It can be clipped onto your clothing and doesn't require you to connect it to your other devices like a smartphone, although you can connect it to Bluetooth headphones. It doesn't have a hardware display or an app, but it has a built-in camera that identifies things and gives information about them, as well as a mic and speaker.
Although it looks cool and futuristic, it's unlikely to save us heaps of time communicating. If anything, it could be a new source of frustration. It's like when you think you can quickly write an email on your phone and then just switch to your laptop after realizing it's taking too long.
Besides, the message templates it suggests, such as "on my way!" would definitely cast doubt and leave my friends thinking that I'd been hacked. That's because it's impersonal. Everyone knows it's embarrassing when iPhone autocorrects to that suggested message as it coveys a certain level of optimism about being en route somewhere when you're not that enthusiastic.
That's not to say that it doesn't have better use cases to help with productivity. I can see how the feature to translate languages or answer questions using AI with a voice command could be helpful, but I'm very certain that the AI Pin will not change my life.