Humane lost its bet on the iPhone because it was cloaked in AI

Ai Pin has officially died. HP has purchased parts of Humane, and Ai Pin will stop working in a week. Cause of death? Humane disguised an old and unprepared bet by former Apple engineers against the iPhone as artificial intelligence hardware.

Bloomberg reports HP has agreed to purchase assets from Humane at $116 million. Humane’s only product, Ai Pin will not become a HP product. HP will instead add the Humane parts it is acquiring to its AI portfolio.

The Ai Pin was not as AI-rich as its name would suggest.

The hardware was basically an Apple Watch-sized version of the iPhone. Only it had no display aside from a low fidelity projector that relied on an unintuitive hand gesture system to control.

It could summarize your text messages, but not your text messages. Just the ones that people sent to your special Ai Pin phone number.

The actual AI aspects mostly relied on early versions of ChatGPT. Apple isn’t doing enough with Siri to make its voice assistant competitive with ChatGPT, but at least the iPhone is where the best features of ChatGPT exist — and they’re evolving daily.

Before it was called Ai Pin, the product was being developed during a global conversation around smartphone addiction and too much screen time in our everyday lives. Apple even released a feature to ease concern called Screen Time that allegedly tracks device usage.

Then the pandemic made remote work the norm, and screens became the only way we stayed connected.

Humane still positioned its product as the solution for helping you reconnect with the real world and use your phone less. The hardware was managed through a website because Humane knew that requiring a smartphone app was antithetical to the device’s purpose.

Personally, I never got to try the Ai Pin. The concept is cool, but it’s a smartphone accessory that extends the experience — like AirPods or the Apple Watch — not a standalone device worth hundreds of dollars for the hardware and another monthly fee for the product to do anything.

9to5Mac Take

Former high-level Apple executives Imran Chandhri, Bethany Bongiorno and co-founders of Humane join HP to help the PC maker integrate AI in its products.

Although less glamorous than the previous product, the marketing of the mini smartphone without a screen or much battery to be an artificial intelligence device was a gamble that paid off.

It seems generous that a company would spend $116 million on a product that costs $500 or more and requires a $24/month subcription. The device stops working 10 months and 2 weeks after its release. Rest in HP Humane. Add 9to5Mac’s Google News feed to your Google News.FTC: we use auto affiliate links that earn income. More.

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