Humane’s AI Pin has been a highly anticipated, too-good-to-be-true device that promises to replace your smartphone, and now we’ve finally gotten to test it out. The Verge’s Editor-at-Large and Vergecast host, David Pierce, reviews AI Pin’s recognition and Q&A features, laser ink projector, but most of all, gets his patience tested. While the device lacked some fundamental software needs, the AI Pin is working towards something very, very cool. Just unsure how soon it'll come, if ever.
Read more: www.theverge.com/e/23890543
00:00 Intro
01:46 What is Humane AI Pin?
03:53 Hardware (weight, size, battery overheating, accessories)
06:01 Gestures, laser ink display
8:06 Camera (photos, videos, scene detection)
9:50 Responsiveness
10:22 Software (Cosmos, Tidal, messaging, reminders)
14:40 Conclusion
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Does Ben Strauss owe us a Blue Yeti mic? Who makes the rules?
Yes, Ben, if you’re reading this, think long and hard about your past, and if there might be a reason you owe a small debt to The Verge. While toddlers may act volatile, they have a deeper and more sensitive relationship to reality.
Ben Strauss is the new Amazon. AI knows what's up.
Who is Ben Strauss?
It’s amazing that a company, full of extremely intelligent people, were able to gather millions to create a device that won’t go anywhere.
I think the hope is they create a product and another big company just offers to buy them out because they don't want to miss out on an opportunity
@@arjunn1321 And this is how you create a bubble economy.
@@arjunn1321 Yep, that's my thoughts as well. Get enough interest in a sub-par product that the concept and "tech" behind it will be bought by another company or companies until a usable product 2.0 launch in 5-10 years.
Silicon Valley is an incestuous system where money is showered on tech friends. No need to demonstrate any viability, as long as you make a cool demo.
so true
I love how the AI Pin can't even process requests that contain Unicode characters like the é in Beyoncé and then proceeds into revealing that é is the Unicode character U+00E9 🤣
Don't forget the part where making it stumble into unicode completely breaks the internal prompt processing and makes it ramble out its instruction prompt. I can't wait until we start getting videos of the pin rambling off stuff that sets off a massive class action lawsuit.
and that's not even a Unicode character.
yep i was just coming to the comments section to point out how it got tripped up by the é 😂
@@ClawthorneAll of this is being held up by popsicle sticks and generic prompts.
@@Clawthorne waiting for that Beyoncé zero day exploit
this device encapsulates this era of AI hype vs reality.
This is a bad product, But, Cmon, we gonna get atleast something equivalent of Jarvis like copilot within these next 5 years just with the gradual improvements we are getting routinely. And if all this was a result of one breakthrough paper, then the Hype is justified cuz there would be many breakthroughs where money and research is.
Copilot and Gpt for coding are pretty useful I’ve been making real money with them
I think I do believe in that era of Jarvis-like AI like how Stark uses it, but we are definitely not there yet. And also, I struggle to understand why we can’t just incorporate this into just a smartwatch tbh.
I bet it wouldn't actually make it it the software is polished. The biggest problem with this device is thats useless. Noone needs it. Everything can be archived via phone already, maybe, just maybe takes a few more seconds. The next generation of phones will be chips working directly on your iris, anything else will be a smartphone until this happen. Im pretty sure.
I completely disagree. ChatGPT 4 is extremely useful for a lot of things. It has been life changing for me. This, however, is just a bad product.
Waiting for Ben Strauss to appear in the comments!
I was really hoping it would send the text anyway LOL
same! That was hilarious
the fact that you can't set reminders or alarms on DAY 1 makes me fully expect this company to fold. That is an astounding omission.
Equally shocking: your data is stuck in the Humane ecosystem, even though we've had standard interchange formats for all sorts of data, and web app APIs, for decades now???
Keep in mind they fired their CTO, so perhaps they've recognised the problem
The fact that people dwell on things that can be fixed in a 5 minute software update is crazy
Well according to their roadmap those things should arrive sometime in summer.
@@pt9845if it cant do basic stuff then what do you want me to do with the thing? Ask what im looking at all day?
User: Text my girlfriend AI: There are multiple matching contacts, Which one do you mean?
“You have no girlfriend. Who are you lying to?”
To be fair, that could be a legit scenario.
@basicallyhumanomg😂
@basicallyhuman "No!! Do not send!!" Okay. Sending group message. Ah I love the AI future. It feels so... early 2000's.
“OK. Texting Mike ‘Girlfriend’ “
Listening to music straight from the pin and not earbuds or headphones is insane behavior
Ah yes, a 700 dollar pin that is about as good as siri.
Seems slower
It almost makes Siri look better
As bad as siri 😂
At least Siri can set reminders! Which is literally the only thing I use it for.
siri is at least a feature on a phone which you can ignore and continue with your life... this device is the phone. lol
I don't know how you're using your phone but almost none of the scenarios you showed seemed that much better than using a phone with the assistant. This is especially true if you wear earbuds that can trigger the assistant. On top of that, who would believe anything this thing says outside of the most trivial things. If it's anything important, you're definitely going to have to verify anything this thing tells you. Then even on top of that the monthly fees and price of this device are insane.
Exactly. A product with no market.
This device tries to sell something AI can't do. AI is good at shallow knowledge you can look for yourself. Anything but that and the algo can get things horribly wrong.
I agree, It seems like more work to use this device than a phone. Especially the projection onto the users hand.. significantly more limiting than opening google on your phone
@@BrunodeSouzaLino Agreed. Current AI just saves me time on looking through multiple search engine pages. And when I do ask it to do something harder, eg generate computer code, it's good for superficial stuff only. Asking it to write whole programs or SQL queries is asking for trouble. Not to mention that almost all AI is cloud based, meaning that anything you write/generate in it is owned by someone else. Anyone with an actual business won't go near anything with such terms.
@@BrunodeSouzaLinothis device will get software updates, and will have a huge market. Pulling out phone for clock, camera, and AI is much much slower. 😂
The thing you say about all the extra steps of a phone, Taking it out of your pocket, unlocking it, opening an app, can literally all be done in 3 seconds naturally. This pin takes more than 15 seconds when you consider pressing the button, asking the question, and waiting for a response. How is this more productive?
Just to inform people - the TEXAS HOLD 'EM by beyond backslash U00E9" is because U00E9 is the utf-8 encoding in computers for the character é. So technically it did know who - it just said it incorrectly.
that is hilarious! I hadn't thought of this!
But it didn’t understand that it shouldn’t put all the Unicode blah blah into the request to find music.
Yes. But it’s insane that it can’t handle non-ASCII characters
And this should have been caught in testing. Let me guess, I'm out of luck if I want one that works in Japanese.
@@johnnyw525sounds fixable in a 5 min software update
This is the kind of "one-step" thing that i used the "squeeze" function of my Pixel 3 for. And despite being half a decade ago, the Pixel 3 worked better than it seems like this does.
Takes too long to pull out phone. This is much better.
@@pt9845what about a smartwatch with Google assistant? My Galaxy Watch 4 LTE can do much more without needing a phone. It just lacks a camera.
"I haven't talked to Ben Strauss since college" 😆
Humane takes themselves too seriously. This thing doesnt feel fun. Its feels like designers want to be designing stuff and be recognise that design can save the world by doing design.
Yeah - pretty much just this design for its own sake..
Can we talk about how awesome this review is? Verge is absolutely crushing it lately with this and the Apple Vision Pro.
Ben Strauss owes David a Blue Yeti now. Them’s the rules
Couldn’t this just be an app on the Apple Watch?
It does use a camera which the Apple Watch doesn't have, but that doesn't mean Apple couldn't just, y'know, add one.
@@protocolsevI don’t know. I have had enough bad experiences trying to show people things on my Apple Watch to know that a camera on the watch would be a bad user experience.
@@protocolsevwrist mounted cameras have never worked. They’re simply pointed in the wrong direction. Plus the AW is a very tight package, not a single user wants it to be larger and have a worse battery life just so they can take pictures of the inside of their sleeve.
Supposedly they are trying to shove gemeni by Google into the iPhone, it's not nearly ready but in a few years 🎉🎉 🎉
Maybe, probably, but if it was just an app nobody would care. It becomes something people care about because there is a shiny piece of tech to go along with it.
I would say this device would be great for people who have limited vision. Make it as a companion device for our smartphone. Then it would be revolutionary.
What I can't wrap my head around is this: how did this product pass any focus groups?!
There are none, you only need charismatic founders who are good at selling fantasies and the VC money will flow.
@@gundalfx Exactly 😂 However, the rich must be disgustingly rich if they can afford throwing hundreds of millions on a project just because they feel it's worth it.
This feels like a product for the vision impaired but with none of the focus on vision impaired. The price, the magnet, the slowness, the protector
Ah man, I deeply missed David Pierce video reviews. I remember his awesome Moto 360 review convinced me to buy that watch. This was excellent, please keep 'em coming David!
I want better --still holds true😀
This feels like a device that would work better as an accessory to a phone rather then a standalone device
Agreed. If it was built around that goal, it’d be way cheaper and probably faster!
You may just need a headset for your phone to do the same thing. Wired or wireless.
It would be amazing for those with disabilities. Still have a phone. Still able to take pictures and other info they may need. Seems like that should have been there test bed before going mainstream.
Just slap a camera on an Apple Watch
"Oh my god, I havent talked to Ben Strauss from college" 🤣🤣👍I love how Pin can get you in trouble that fast.
I can’t imagine at all that I would use a device that speaks out loud in public. I use my AirPods all day long with Siri, but I’d never speak to an AI assistant on speaker whilst in public 😂
I think we're supposed to be wearing bluetooth earbuds all day
In most situation, you don't want to speak your request, éven with airpods
This, I can already do all this with my phone and have never done it in public. At home I can but rarely do it. Just for setting alarms, reminders, the weather report which this does not do.
But I want my personal AI assistant to be a glowing, translucent orb that floats beside me! 😢
That's the Pro Max version I'm afraid
Like Destiny?
I want my personal assistant to be like Janet from "The Good Place" TV show! She appears out of her "boundless void" when summoned!
Voiced by Peter Dinklage
@@ModMINI I prefer JOI from Blade Runner 2049. Hot and actually useful and if im nice enough it'll fall in love with me.
$700 for a Google Assistant that costs $288 per year.
Expectation 12:55, Reality 09:49. Which demo stood out to you?
you know, I install privacy screen protecters on my phone so that I can privately interact with my device. this thing just reads everything out loud 🤣
When the army of support people analysing the photos decided your drink is healthy
Wouldn't pay 20 bucks for this.
@@motherflerkentannhauser8152 I think the idea is that you walk around everywhere with wireless earbuds in your ears.
This is so entertaining to watch. The fact that the gadget have many quirks and the host is just keep laughing and smiling ~ instead of upset. 👍
He has to…
You should do more reviews , Well Explained
I'm not sold on this idea, not by a long shot. I agree with comments saying this could be an app. Or this simply needs much more work. The Lyft error made for a good laugh though.
AI and software updates will make this immensely better. Lyft error was justified, nobody knows what Ryde is.
@@pt9845 Couldn't it say that it wasn't able to recognize it? I don't doubt what AI can do. I just won't invest in something like this until I see a fitting use case. I can use Google lens, Gemini, ChatGPT, etc on my phone.
lol the pin said ‘bet, imma ask this person you haven’t spoke to in forever to buy you this microphone. That’s cool right?’ 😂😂😂
that reminds me I should clean up my contacts of people I havent spoken to in years
David is an icon. So great to see him back doing reviews for The Verge!
Loved this review. It is exactly what all reviews should be. Practical application of the product with no excessive attempts at showmanship for youtubes sake. More like a Ted talk about the device itself from an unbiased party. Very straight forward and informative. Exactly what I wanted to know and how I wanted to know it before considering a purchase. 10/10
Did a spit take at “please purchase the blue yeti microphone for me” 13:30 the thought of just sending that message to an old acquaintance out of the blue is hilarious
When I tell you I laughed out loud, I LAUGHED OUT LOUD! 😂
I honestly need a follow-up Humane pin video from your team with more people showing it messing up. This short made me laugh so hard! I love it when AI gadgets mess up, it's my kryptonite, and the actual review and this short sent me in hysterics.
Soon, a delivery to David Pierce with a Blue Yeti mic and a note: “Miss you, bro. - Ben Strauss”
Even if these devices never go anywhere for the average consumer, it would be a great assistive device, particularly for the older generation who feel locked out of a lot of consumer technology due to the extensive gap in their understanding of the functional symbology behind tech. My own parents really struggle to discern meaning from the UI symbols they come across that me and my generation who grew up with this design language take for granted. I can see natural language models helping to bridge this gap and allow them to parse out more naturally what they want their devices to do. I also work in healthcare with those suffering from TBI’s and mobility issues and i could see devices like this helping to enable independence in those that struggle to adapt their new physical and mental challenges to navigating the world outside the hospital and into their recovery.
This right here. Their wasting their time with the hardware. This would make for an amazing app on your phone.
I agree, but this could just be an AI assistant on your phone like Siri will be in iOS 18 and be able to do anything on the phone or answer any questions about it.
I like youre points but the phone is the issue. A simple pin on a patients clothes bypasses a whole range of issues. Some of the folk I work with cannot have phones as they are confused and will call emergency services or would inevitably become confused trying to navigate to an app. The natural language model and lack of screen of symbols bypasses some of the issues folks in similar predicaments would find challenging. I do think it’d make a fine app but chances are this technology will simply be ported over to all flagships phones assistants eventually anyways. A more stripped back assistive device would be for many, better than an app on the phone.
@@smartpig555119 Ok. I think I get your point (despite not being convinced by it). Yet, would you pay 700€ for this pin???
@@tanookimarketing Google Lens called and said Hello! ☝🏾
now convinced - not that I wasn't before - that I would love hanging out with David. thanks again for being the only journalist to respond to my DM about Periscope, Pierce.
Really awesome to see David on The Verge again!
The hand projector thing is honestly genius, if only the implementation was better
Well I just saved $700 + the monthly subscription. Thanks
I love the backend command "avoid asking for clarification or what THEY want to here" 1. It doesn't care what you want, the software goal is to process your request and run with anything that is result of that process. 2. The user is referred as THEY. now imagine a human customer service training that does not use words like customer, guest etc but uses word THEY. it creates automatic antagonism
The wholesome outtakes are probably the best advert for the pin right now, that says it all
Glad to see David Pierce as a reviewer, and a great one ;d
So basically all the compute is done in the cloud and there's just a TTS/STT with the ability to take pictures running on the device with command logic that queries the cloud? Idk if 700 USD really is a fair price even if it's form factor is pretty small.
Great review, honestly I wasn't expecting much from this device but can see it being really useful(once they polish & fix the features) with the older generation perhaps as an assistive tool since a lot of today's worlds and environment must be really hard to decifer for them. I also like the idea of using this instead of my phone for simple but useful tasks and queries.
Its funny how everyone already thought that this device was an awful idea *in theory*. Now we can see that it is, somehow, even worse in practice!
Apparently, what humane AI pin is best at, is reminding us how useful our phones are.
David you were extremely nice and graceful during this review to say the least.
Price aside, I don't have enough use cases for this. 2:17 I can already do all 3 of these examples on my Apple Watch. Raising my wrist to speak is at least as easy as tapping a pin, and the watch screen is obviously much clearer than a single-color projector. Granted, the watch can't do "look at a this and tell me about it". But for me, the Apple Watch does accomplish one of the stated goals of the AI Pin, which is that I don't look at my phone nearly as much as I did before I had a smart watch. 14:54 Oh, you made my exact point too 😂 I typed my comment while the rest of the video played, and now it turns out I didn't really need to!
The Star Trek store has had a toy combadge that connects to Siri/Hey Google for several years now. And it gives you the full feature set of both those assistants. And it's only $80. And it's a functional Star Trek combadge.
I could programm a timer API for this in a few hours idk why they couldn't do it earlier
If a wearable camera like the Insta360 Go 3 could connect to Google Assistant on your phone, it could beat this device for a lower purchase price and without a monthly fee.
LMAO this device is absolute scam
this is one of the funniest videos I've seen in months
I think the device is great. And it will get even better with later versions
Siri with extra steps and computer vision that sometimes works
People don’t mind interacting with their devices. No one ever says “god I hate that I have to make 3 taps and a swipe to get to my messages”. Also interacting with your device is so much better than sitting and waiting in the abyss.
Yeah it's really feels like solving a pain point that was never really a pain point for consumers.
Fascinating to see someone review it in action .. Really makes me hope that soon this kind of functionality is totally integrated into the Apple Watch and other such devices
Star Trek communicator vibes.
Honestly I'd prefer an actual combadge with a simple bluetooth speaker/mic built in and a touch sensor that just connects me to my phone. If I need to actually "scan" something I can do what every other starfleet officer does and pull out my tricorder (phone) and snap a pic, and get a proper information.
Did you use the belt clip on your run? The chest-magnet seems like it would uncomfortably, rhythmically tap me while running.
Ben Strauss here, you want me to buy you the mic?
Definitely more of a glimpse of the future than anything ready now. Part of the problem is that I want a device with a screen so I don’t see a day coming when I could have this instead of a phone, instead I’d be paying for 2 expensive devices, both with monthly subscriptions. It definitely highlights what Apple could be doing with the Apple Watch. In fact, it’s a good example for the anti-trust case that no one can develop a device like the AI Pin as an iPhone assistant because Apple locks down the ecosystem, meaning they don’t have to push boundaries with the Apple Watch
David doing a lot of The Verge's heavy lifting these days and I am all for it
11:00 hey, subtitle guy, it's Tidal, not "Title" Also at 3:22 there's a small typo that says "A nd" instead of "and", but this one is just nitpicking
Released 12 days too late...April 1st would have been more appropriate.
I thought you looked familiar, welcome back, David.
love david reviews
How do you make payments with the device? You gave an example of leaving your phone at home but this doesn't appear to be NFC capable in case you needed to purchase an item on the way home.
The smartphone is truly one of the greatest inventions of all time, for a reason.
Lol ran into that same chat assistants problem where the API endpoint needs to be instructed to deliver a response in the form of a JSON array which means you have to do some extra trickery to avoid catching the system instructions in the prompt response. It’s really not dev friendly.
3:15 so about the same as a phone can get you with a wireless earbud in and Google Assistant/Siri ?
From the moment they announced I knew it was a bad idea. I'm impressed they went forward with it. Nothing about it makes sense.
If an Apple Watch had (much) better AI built in (and perhaps a camera), then it seems like it would render the need for this device obsolete instantly, right? Many of the things David is trying to do can be accomplished by using Siri on the Apple Watch, albeit sometimes slowly. With Apple's upcoming AI stuff, it seems like a separate device like this could be dead in the water. Great video, and great way to illustrate the current limitations of the device. There's a lot of potential both for this and other already existing devices (like the Apple Watch).
I'm surprised this got released at all. It looked like an elaborate scam.
Asking your old college friend to randomly purchase you a microphone had me in tears 😂
Those who purchased this product should take advantage because in a couple of years it will be a relic
Great review David.
A keychain sized camera that pairs with a mobile phone. Small enough to easily pull out of a pocket, unlike a bulky phone. Or, attach to a keyring, outside of a bag, hang of a belt, etc. It's just a remote wireless iphone camera with a microphone and speaker. Or just put a tiny camera on the top edge of an Apple Watch.
There are several devices like this about to hit the market (Humane pin, Rabbit R1, Open Interpreter O1). I think it’s potentially very useful. People who are saying “I would just use an app” or whatever are missing the point. You want something that’s connected to your email and calendar that knows about you and your work or family and is also watching and listening to everything around you. This one may not hit the mark, but the first iPhone was kind of useless too because there was no app store. Give it time and these things will evolve.
All we need is some handheld device now
The fact this thing gets over heated its hilarious
If they made this a phone app I'd buy it. Their software (if they fixed it and added all the features), well this would be game changing.
I cannot wait for the Vergecast banter about this thing tomorrow.
What happens if someone tries to steal the pin from you?? Especially since it’s only connected via a magnet?
I think the whole review can be wrapped up in the fact that it tried to text a random person when he asked it to buy a microphone and his reaction was "that was the first time it worked".
This is dead on arrival because Mera Raybans will converge onto this exact functionality within the next 1-2 years. And per Nilay's graph, they are much more convenient hence will prevail.
One question that I have about the sunglasses form factor is do you wear your sunglasses inside if you want to use the AI assistant around the house?
@tacojohnellenich well adding shades clip on is a good option.
@@tacojohnellenich1. You have smart speakers in house. 2. It can be transparent, not necessarily sun glass
Yeah I'm betting on Mera
When I talked to one of their recruiters, they said their OS is just customized Android
...and?
Really? That is quite the overkill for an embedded device, maybe it is actually wearOS based (small footprint Android).
That’s actually hilarious with Ben Strauss :)
my boy Ben Strauss needs to come forward and drop a comment
I'm gonna guess the Rabbit R1 is going to be about as functional as this pin (if it releases on time)
My guess is probably a lot better. This device started as a way to get away from using phones and pivoted to an AI device. Rabbit was an AI device at the very beginning. I think AiPin is cool but the “AI” aspect is so poorly executed.
Great review Verge
Many of these questions are ones I ask my Google Assistant. I'd love a tiny Google Home, maybe called Google Away.
Fantastic review. Thanks for that.
This review pushes me more towards trying Rabbit Tech
If there is an alexa like variant for this for smart homes, Ill buy it. I think LLMs are a massive improvement over whatever alexa is doing right now (comparing embeddings i guess).
hey BEN , where is david's Blue yeti?
Great review!
Honestly love this project