The folks at Humane think you should get off your friggin' smartphone, and start living life. That might sound appealing to some, but their solution to this involves an expensive and hilariously limited AI-driven pin that you wear on your shirt.

Dubbed the "AI Pin," you're mostly supposed to interface with it by holding a conversation with a Siri-like assistant, but it'll also project text onto your palm if you really need to see something.

Watch the company's "What is Ai Pin?" video:

What is Ai Pin? Full video:

Where we are now
00:00 Intro with Bethany
00:15 Shipping update
00:54 Ai Pin overview

Where we’re going next
5:38 Vision with Imran
6:58 Nutrition
8:04 Why Ai Pin?
8:40 Using Ai Pin on Charge Pad
9:26 Using Ai Pin in Charge Case
9:53 Using Ai Pin to… pic.twitter.com/R0Cvh4b386

— Humane (@Humane) March 21, 2024

Reviewers have finally got their hands on this $700 piece of gear, and they've put it through its paces. Unfortunately, it's an overpriced piece of tech that absolutely does not live up to the hype. Let's see just how bad it is.

It's like a version of Siri that can't do very much

Having the thing right there did make me use it more, sometimes for things I wouldn't have bothered to pull out my phone to do. It feels a little like the early days of Alexa and Siri a decade ago, when you discovered that saying "set a timer for 10 minutes" beats opening your phone's Clock app by a mile — and you can do it with sticky fingers, too.

Except, oh wait, the AI Pin can't set an alarm or a timer. It can't add things to your calendar, either, or tell you what's already there. You can create notes and lists — which appear in the Humane Center web app that is also where you connect the device to your contacts and review your uploaded photos — but if you try to add something to the list later, it'll almost always fail for some reason. The problem with so many voice assistants is that they can't do much — and the AI Pin can do even less.

[The Verge]

A lot of my interactions with the AI Pin also felt like problems I encountered with earlier versions of Siri, Alexa and the Google Assistant. The overly wordy answers, for example, or the pronounced two or three-second delay before a response, are all reminiscent of the early 2010s. When I asked the AI Pin to "remember that I parked my car right here," it just saved a note saying "Your car is parked right here," with no GPS information or no way to navigate back. So I guess I parked my car on a sticky note.

[Engadget]

It's trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist

This also won't be the last AI wearable we see: Meta's Ray-Ban glasses already have AI capabilities rolling out to the public in the next month; startup Brilliant is making display-enabled AI glasses; and the Rabbit R1 is a handheld AI-powered gadget, like a phone-meets-AI GameBoy.

The AI Pin falls in the middle of these. Many of these devices are striving for a way to reinvent the phone in my pocket, but I've gotta say: that phone is already pretty damn versatile and amazing. It already has my interconnected life living on it. That's what AI wearables need to contend with, much like smartwatches did before. They need to be helpful, affordable extensions and not expensive attempts at reinventing what already works.

[CNET]

Ultimately the problem with the Humane Ai Pin is that there isn't much else to do with it. I can't use it to call an Uber or Lyft to my location. I can ask for a nearby coffee shop, but it doesn't know how to navigate me to it. I can't access my work calendar to ask what's on my schedule. I can ask it to remember something, but it can't remind me of said thing. (I told it that I had an appointment in the city the next day, and the following morning I asked what was on my schedule, and the Pin read out a random text message I got a week ago.) I can't even set a timer or ask the Ai Pin to share a photo I've captured with the device. It's ridiculous that it's this bare-bones at launch, though the company says many of these features will arrive over time.

[Wired]

The attempt at making a futuristic projection seems to have flopped

When you want to read an incoming message or fiddle with the Pin’s settings, you hold your hand up in front of the Pin so the projector can beam its interface onto your palm. To interact with items that appear on your palm, you're supposed to tilt your hand around to highlight them and pinch your fingers Vision Pro style to "click" on them. [...]

But using the Pin can get frustrating, fast. Take those tilt and pinch gestures: They're easy to understand, but hard to master. Even after two weeks, I still find myself struggling to select just the right menu options.

Here's another catch: The projector is basically unreadable when you're in the sun. Summer's just around the corner, and it's sure to offer plenty of warm days I don't want my phone to get in the way of, but the Pin is much less useful in broad daylight.

[The Washington Post]

The laser projection is sharp on the palm, but it's meant for really quickly and quietly reading small bits of text and information. It will overheat if used for an extended period. It's supposed to be a screen-free experience.

It cannot be stressed how much Humane wants you off your phone.

[Mashable]

Still want one of these strange pins in spite of the reviews? You can order one directly from Humane, and it'll reportedly ship sometime in May.

[Image: Humane]