The first and most damning condemnation of a general-use tech device separate from your phone is that the phone already has almost all the same tools. These new assistants fail to make themselves special and new: both of the big ones on the market are basically another phone with an OS geared for the generative AI assistant, instead of the other way around. This has pros and cons – while the devices have cameras, the screens (if they have one) are usually smaller, because these devices want to fit in your pocket or on your shirt lapel; they don’t come with any keyboard functionality, instead relying on their own blend of voice command and touch or gesture; they tend to overheat, because they don’t have the same space for heat sinks as phones do.
It’s all very impressive in a vacuum. Voice controlled AI assistance that can actually complete the tasks you give it. The problem is that your phone is also a marvel of technology. Sci-fi of the past occasionally grazes against the idea of the pocket computer, but the device itself is so incredible it would have been outlandish to predict any earlier than the 70s. The thing that replaces it will have to be equally outlandish. These new things are not yet like that.
Phones have expanded to fill any niche you may have. Buy tickets! Send emails! Chat with friends! Read a book aloud! Make a reservation! Tune your violin! Play games! Edit photos! Listen to radio! Watch TV for free! Call a rideshare app to pick you up! Order a drink for yourself ahead of time! The modern internet and app library will carry you 90% of the way there. With generative AI companions on your phone, (sometimes) you don’t even have to write the email anymore either. The question is not whether the AI would some day be able to do all this (it probably will with enough software updates) it’s why you’d even bother when you likely already have a phone, most of which come with an assistant like Siri or Google. The Humane pin costs as much as an upper-end smartphone; the Rabbit R1 costs as much as a lower-end one.
If an AI companion tool like the ones we’re seeing now had come out in 2009, with all of the same tools and functions, sure – that would have beat smartphones. For a while. And then the phones would win purely on the ability to take, then edit, and post photos to social media. Most of these AI companions cannot yet do that. Their size may take them out of that game permanently. EndGadget’s review of the Humane Pin reveals it can do daylight photos alright, but makes dimly-lit ones look like something out of a horror game.
The AI is a bonus, if the AI technology improves enough to be worth it, but at this point most tools are working on their own AI assistants anyway – your Outlook for iOS may catch up and overtake the Humane Pin or the Rabbit by the time either of them is good enough at their job to accurately guess who’s most important to you. Your Instagram on desktop (or at least your Buffer or Hootsuite SocMed management software) already has an AI ready for you to use. No matter which brand of pin or companion you’re looking at, these assistants don’t have a foot in the door yet. The Rabbit R1 comes closer simply by virtue of having easier-to-access controls and a lower price point, something your average Moto phone can also say, although it comes with a trade of having to work with Google systems if you don’t enjoy that.
www.theverge.com/2024/1/9/24030667/rabbit-r1-ai-action-model-price-release-date
https://www.androidcentral.com/phones/rabbit-r1-first-impressions
