At the start of this year, The Information reported that Apple was developing its own wearable AI pin, described as a “thin, flat, circular disc with an aluminum-and-glass shell” with two cameras. Then in February, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said Apple was “ramping up work” on an AI pendant that could be pinned or worn like a necklace. Now he’s saying the AI pendant may not come out for a while. Or ever, if you ask me.
In his scoop about Apple developing a screenless Whoop competitor, Gurman also says the AI pendant “has been postponed.” He didn’t say why. Apple is a large company that works on many projects, many of which never see the light of day. An AI pendant never made sense and probably never will.
I’m not saying that Apple couldn’t make an AI pendant that wouldn’t suck, but the road to that is littered with over a decade of failed wearable devices. The most recent of them was Humane’s AI Pin.
The AI Pin was billed as an AI gadget that would allow you to ditch your smartphone’s screen and addictive apps to become more present in the real world again. It attached to your shirt with a magnetic battery “booster.” The design was doomed from the start. As I wrote in the intro to my lengthy review of the device, I almost lost the device during a thunderstorm because—get this—the strong winds had blown it off my shirt. Not only that, but the magnets weren’t strong enough to work with thicker clothing like winter jackets. If a wearable that’s designed to be worn can’t be, you know, worn properly, it kind of defeats the whole purpose.
Clipping it to a shirt also meant the built-in camera was always flopping around. It’s no surprise the photos and video looked like garbage, with either poor resolution or really shaky footage. This is the main reason why so many other wearables, especially ones with built-in cameras but also those without cameras like the useless Friend AI pendant you wear around your neck, failed, too. They’re always flopping around as you go about your day, which makes it harder for any cameras or microphones to “see” and “hear” for you.
Remember the Limitless AI recorder that clipped to the neckline of your T-shirt? I didn’t. If not for a Google search, I would have forgotten it ever existed. And more than a decade ago, a device called the Narrative Clip tried to make a “lifelogging” camera a thing. That, of course, never took off. Camera stabilization has improved quite a bit since the Narrative Clip; even so, nobody wants to wear what’s essentially a body cam on them.
Even after selling itself to HP and disappearing into the tech graveyard, the stink of Humane’s failed AI Pin still lingers. Apple doesn’t need to make an AI pendant that would have its own inherent limitations. It already has two of the most popular wearable devices ever made: the Apple Watch and AirPods, both of which have been receiving more AI-centric features, like support for Siri AI via software updates. As John Loeffler wrote in his recent The Next Interface story, wireless earbuds may be the best place for AI—visual or audio intelligence that helps connect the real world with the digital. Oh, and would you look at that? Apple is reportedly working on AirPods with camera sensors that work with Visual Intelligence.
