Portable AI, a month later
It’s been a bit more than one month since my initial post on Portable AI and things are moving fast. The Humane Ai Pin has started shipping, the rabbit R1 has started shipping, Friend has a kickstarter campaign, Rewind became Limitless and a lot of people are now talking about those new “AI devices”.
The Humane Ai Pin was the first to ship and the reviews are it. Unfortunately, they’re not glowing, as the device disappoints on many levels: it’s slow, prone to providing incorrect answers, overheats to the point of shutdown, has a barely readable display in daylight, is limited in what it can do and lacks integration with your Apple/Google account… Its hefty starting price of 700$ and the fact it turns into a paperweight as soon as you stop paying the 24$/month subscription does not help.
The Rabbit R1 has also hit the shelves, with a pickup event in NYC on April 24th. While it’s marginally better received than the Humane Ai Pin, criticisms still abound. Although faster than its competitor and sporting a traditional screen (but that presents some usability concerns, e.g. navigation in the menu with the scroll wheel instead of using touch), it’s lower price of 199$ is not enough to forgive some of the drawbacks. The build quality matches the price tag and, like the Humane Ai Pin, if confidently provides incorrect answers to your queries and offers limited features at this stage.
Reviewers have noted a trend in the rush to release AI-powered devices, often resulting in pre-beta, half-baked products.. There is a huge disconnect between what’s promised (sometimes even demonstrated) and what users can actually do with the device they receive.
One very plausible reason is they fear an announcement from Google (Google I/O starting on May 14th) or Apple (WWDC starting on Jun 10th) and want to push as many devices as possible in the hands of end-users before those. Indeed, Apple and Google control their platform and can provide a tight integration on a device you already own and within an ecosystem you’re already locked into. A thought offering to beat. This is potentially the same reason why Humane and Rabbit are exploring different form factors, that work outside of the established ecosystems.
On April 15th, Rewind unveiled its new product called, Limitless. Alongside this announcement, the company rebranded itself as Limitless. Limitless offers a web app and desktop apps that records everything you’ve seen, said or heard. It’s clearly targeted at meetings, providing a pre-meeting context based on previous information it collected, real-time transcription and note-taking during the meeting and post-meeting summaries. While I haven’t had the chance to try it yet, I like the idea of focusing on a given use case and (hopefully) delivering it right instead of promising a lot of possibilities and falling short on most of them.
As a companion to its apps, Limitless plans to release a wearable, the Limitless Pendant. This is not shipping yet (planned for Q4 2024) and is the evolution of their previous Rewind Pendant that never shipped. But it changes the form factor and I really like what they’re promising here. It seems like a well thought out product proposed at a reasonable price. And the Consent Mode where they perform voice identification and recognise that a user has given its permission to be recorded would be quite incredible, IF it works reliably.
Finally, there’s the open-source Friend project that I’m following closely (e.g. on their Discord channel) and it’s moving quite fast. They’ve joined forces with ADeus, launched a successful Kickstart campaign and are building a company. The energy is great, but it’s in a period of flux, making it difficult at this stage to know where they’re going and what the end goal is. At some point, they express interest in focusing on hardware and firmware development while fostering a community of external applications.
As I continue to monitor developments in this space, I regularly update my list of wearable AI projects. Be sure to check it out for the latest updates.