Wireless earbuds have quite a few inescapable trends, but if there’s one thing that’s proven to be a gravitational force in the space, it’s AI.
In that vein, Plaud, the company known for its AI recorders, is launching Plaud One Explorer Edition, which it calls an “AI system” that can record conversations and then turn them into notes, summaries, and other actionable items. The main hardware component in that “system” is a pair of wireless earbuds and a case that look like this:
With the Plaud One, you can capture audio from the wireless earbuds but also through the charging case, and you don’t have to be having an IRL conversation to record—the earbuds/case support call recording and online meeting recording. You can trigger recording from the earbuds, the case, or the app, and, like other Plaud devices, there’s a light (on the case this time) that illuminates when recording is in progress.
One nifty addition here is that Plaud included built-in 4G, so you don’t have to worry about not having Wi-Fi.
Each earbud has 16MB of storage, for a total of 32MB between both. The Plaud One has active noise cancellation (ANC), and the company says they’ll get 6 hours of battery for music playback when ANC is turned off. By most people’s wireless earbuds standards, that’s a fairly subpar battery life—6 hours with ANC on is about average nowadays. Recording times are a bit better, though. The Plaud One are rated for 6 hours of recording in person with the wireless earbuds, but only 3 hours of call/podcast recording.
Plaud says its AI earbuds aren’t like the other AI earbuds, though. Instead of just capturing audio for you to parse later on in an app or on a laptop, Plaud says the Plaud One are agentic (the AI world’s favorite word right now) and can actually work to take action while they’re listening. For example, during a meeting, the Plaud One could draft a follow-up email for your review so that it’s ready to send when you’re done. Likewise, it could theoretically draft some other kind of document or presentation.
Powering all of this is what Plaud is calling “Plaud Agent,” an AI tool that can be integrated into third-party apps like Gmail, Google Calendar, Notion, or Slack, which it says “eliminates the need to switch to a different platform to complete your tasks.” Plaud says that Plaud Agent “produces finished work products, from emails to documents and presentations,” and that those “artifacts” are “ready to edit, share, or export the moment they are generated.”
Bad news if you’re planning on using Plaud Agent a lot, though: there’s a credit system. Each agentic task requires Plaud Credits, and Plaud says that Explorer Edition customers get $200 in Plaud Credits included. Anything beyond that will cost more. Those credits “sit on top” of existing subscriptions, according to Plaud, so if you pay for a Plaud subscription, you’ll still need to buy Plaud Credits if you run out. The company tells Gizmodo that they’re “intentionally using this Explorer phase to learn how customers use Agent before finalizing the longer-term credit structure.”
Transcription is similar to that other Plaud gadgets. There’s a Starter Plan that provides a “base level of transcription,” according to Plaud, but you’ll have to pay to increase capacity—there are Pro and Unlimited tiers, which cost $100 and $240 per year, respectively.
It all sounds very useful in theory, though whether any AI is ready to take the wheel to this extent is highly debatable. I’ll have to see Plaud Agent in action to really believe it. I’ve asked Plaud about what subscriptions are needed, if any, to use Plaud One and will update this post with any further information.
The Plaud One Explorer Edition costs $250, and preorders are live today.
