Humane’s AI Pin: all the news about the dead AI-powered wearable

Humane is selling most of its company to HP for $116 million and will stop selling AI Pin, the company announced today.

AI Pins that have already been purchased will continue to function normally until 3PM ET on February 28th, Humane says in a support document. After that date, Pins will “no longer connect to Humane’s servers.” As a result, AI Pin features will “no longer include calling, messaging, AI queries / responses, or cloud access.” Humane is also encouraging users to download any pictures, videos, and notes stored on their Pins before they are permanently deleted at that shutdown time.

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Humane, which makes the not-great AI Pin, wants other companies to build AI devices and gadgets that use its CosmOS operating system, and it has released a video that appears to show that the company already has it working in a car, TV, smart speaker, and phone.

But note that the video, according to Humane’s own fine print, is for “illustrative purposes only” — it shows “working prototypes” and some “simulated experiences,” and the print says that all “designs, features, and specifications” are subject to change. So don’t take it entirely at face value.

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After warning customers to stop using it, Humane is now formally recalling around 10,500 units of its charging case for the beleaguered AI Pin. The affected cases were sold from last November through May of this year. According to the CPSC recall page, the lithium polymer battery in the Charge Case Accessory can potentially overheat and present a fire hazard. Humane admitted similar findings in a June email to customers.

That worst-case scenario, thankfully, hasn’t happened yet; the recall notes “one report of a charge case overheating and melting during charging,” but there haven’t been any injuries or damage to property. The AI Pin, its magnetic Battery Booster, and Humane’s charging pad are “not affected,” the company said in its earlier email.

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Shortly after Humane released its $699 AI Pin in April, the returns started flowing in.

Between May and August, more AI Pins were returned than purchased, according to internal sales data obtained by The Verge. By June, only around 8,000 units hadn’t been returned, a source with direct knowledge of sales and return data told me. As of today, the number of units still in customer hands had fallen closer to 7,000, a source with direct knowledge said.

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Humane is telling AI Pin owners today that they should “immediately” stop using the charging case that came with its AI gadget. There are issues with a third-party battery cell that “may pose a fire safety risk,” the company wrote in an email to customers (including The Verge’s David Pierce, who reviewed it when it came out).

Humane says it has “disqualified” that vendor and is moving to find another supplier. It also specified that the AI Pin itself, the magnetic Battery Booster, and its charging pad are “not affected.” As recompense, the company is offering two free months of its subscription service, which is required for most of its functionality. The company didn’t say if it will offer a replacement charging case, only that it “will share additional information” after investigating the issue.

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Humane, the startup behind the poorly-reviewed AI Pin wearable computer, is already hunting for a potential buyer for its business. That’s according to a report from Bloomberg, which says the company — led by former longtime Apple employees Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno — is “seeking a price of between $750 million and $1 billion.”

That might be a tough sell after the $699 AI Pin’s debut: the device has been widely panned for its slow responses and a user experience that falls well short of the always-on, wearable AI assistant concept that its founders promised in the run-up to the device’s release. The product was pitched at least partially as a way for people to be more present and reduce their ever-growing dependence on smartphones.

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The idea behind the Humane AI Pin is a simple one: it’s a phone without a screen. Instead of asking you to open apps and tap on a keyboard, this little wearable abstracts everything away behind an AI assistant and an operating system Humane calls CosmOS. Want to make a phone call, send a text message, calculate the tip, write something down, or learn the population of Copenhagen? Just ask the AI Pin. It uses a cellular connection (only through T-Mobile and, annoyingly, not connected to your existing number) to be online all the time and a network of AI models to try to answer your questions and execute your commands. It’s not just an app; it’s all the apps.

Humane has spent the last year making the case that the AI Pin is the beginning of a post-smartphone future in which we spend less time with our heads and minds buried in the screens of our phones and more time back in the real world. How that might work, whether that’s something we want, and whether it’s even possible feel like fundamental questions for the future of our relationship with technology.

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Mobile World Congress, like any good trade show, tries to present us with the best of what’s possible now and a vision for what’s coming next. Which translates to a lot of questions, particularly about the future of phones, like:

“What if phones, but controlled with your eyes?”

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Look, I’m a Humane AI Pin doubter as much as the next person. And I still think the wearable, AI-powered assistant suffers from a case of this-thing-could-have-been-an-app. But I finally got to spend a little face-to-face time with the pin this morning, and you know what? It’s a darn cool gadget. It’s just buried under a layer of marketing so thick that it’s hard to appreciate what it actually could be if Humane wasn’t so self-serious.

If you spend time on Tech Threads or the like, you probably already know what the pin does: you clip it to your shirt, talk to it, and it uses generative AI to answer. It’s a standalone device with its own SIM card, and there’s no screen — just vibes. That, and a little laser that projects menus and text onto your palm so you can interact with mortal trifles like Wi-Fi settings and media playback controls.

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Humane announced that its AI Pin would start shipping in March, but there’s been a small delay. Early adopters are now being told orders will arrive in mid-April at the earliest, according to a video update from Humane staffer (and Verge alumnus) Sam Sheffer and emails we saw in Humane’s official Discord channel.

On the plus side, the company says it’ll now throw in three months of its pricy $24-a-month subscription for free with the $699 pin — and will do so for any other customers who buy one before March 31st, too.

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Humane laid off 4 percent of employees this week in a move that was described as a cost cutting measure to those who were impacted, according to sources familiar with the matter. Employees were recently told by leadership that budgets would be lowered this year, said one of the people, who requested anonymity to speak without the company’s permission.

The cuts, which numbered 10 people, come ahead of the five-year-old startup shipping its first device: a $699, screenless, AI-powered pin that is pitched as a smartphone replacement. After a lot of hype and secrecy, Humane unveiled the AI Pin to the world in November and began accepting preorders, with shipments planned to begin in March.

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Humane announced Friday that the AI Pin, its splashy AI-powered wearable, will start shipping in March 2024. People who placed priority orders will get their devices first, and Humane says it will ship orders based on the date of purchase, according to a post on X (formerly Twitter).

While Humane didn’t share a specific date for when orders would start shipping, the March timeframe is more specific than the early 2024 timeframe the company provided in November.

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On Thursday, after months of demos and hints about what the AI-powered future of gadgets might look like, Humane finally took the wraps off of its first device: the AI Pin.

The device, as we revealed yesterday, is a $699 wearable in two parts: a square device and a battery pack that magnetically attaches to your clothes or other surfaces. In addition to that price, there’s also the $24 monthly fee for a Humane subscription, which gets you a phone number and data coverage through T-Mobile’s network. The company told Wired the device will start shipping in early 2024 and that preorders begin November 16th.

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Humane has been teasing its first device, the AI Pin, for most of this year. It’s scheduled to launch the Pin on Thursday, but The Verge has obtained documents detailing practically everything about the device ahead of its official launch. What they show is that Humane, the company noisily promoting a world after smartphones, is about to launch what amounts to a $699 wearable smartphone without a screen that has a $24-a-month subscription fee and runs on a Humane-branded version of T-Mobile’s network with access to AI models from Microsoft and OpenAI.

The Pin itself is a square device that magnetically clips to your clothes or other surfaces. The clip is more than just a magnet, though; it’s also a battery pack, which means you can swap in new batteries throughout the day to keep the Pin running. We don’t know how long a single battery lasts, but the device ships with two “battery boosters.” It’s powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and uses a camera, depth, and motion sensors to track and record its surroundings. It has a built-in speaker, which Humane calls a “personic speaker,” and can connect to Bluetooth headphones.

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The Ai Pin, the new gadget / wearable device / projector / thing from the secretive startup Humane, might cost as much as $1,000 and may require a monthly subscription for data, according to The Information.

The mysterious device has been in development for years, but we got our first good look at it during co-founder Imran Chaudhri’s presentation at TED this year. In the presentation, he used then unnamed device to accept a phone call, get information about where to buy a gift, translate a sentence that is then spoken in an AI-made version of his voice in French, and even get an opinion on whether he can eat a chocolate bar. It was an impressive demo, though we had a lot of questions about how it all worked.

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