When AI Meets Reality

You have most likely come across the phrase “AI is going to take over everything” in your everyday life. Let me tell you, that reality won’t happen for a long time because of its poor integration into our lives. It’s true that everyone is using ChatGPT or some form of AI technology for daily work or to aid daily decisions, but AI hardware is a different story.

As The Financial Times puts it: “The first wave of AI hardware…has flopped.” When I first came across this article, I was skeptical. Why would any AI integration into our lives fail? AI has already become an important aspect of how we work and learn. The truth is that the AI hardware sector is focusing on producing products for hype rather than functionality.

Take Humane AI’s pin, for example. They promised to replace the smartphone. The entire product was based on attaching a pin to any shirt. The problem was that this device lacked the everyday functionality people depend on their phones for. It didn’t have features people consider basic, like email, and it required learning awkward new gestures. Overall, it felt like something that had to be forced into people’s lives rather than fitting in naturally. Simply put, people did not want to talk to their shirt, whether they were at home or in public.

Okay, well, what if it’s pocket-sized? Wouldn’t that be more convenient and easier to use? We see the same issue with Rabbit R1’s pocket-sized companion. It seemed like it would be the convenient new AI product that would take off, but it was introduced before there was any clear reason for someone to need it. Another example is the new “AI companion friend,” Friend, sold as a $129 wearable necklace. People compared it to a Life Alert button, and it also failed to answer the key question: “How does this make my life easier?”

This is where Apple did what these three products couldn’t: they marketed how their product solves real problems that real people experience in their daily lives. These companies focused on packaging, design, and publicity instead of functionality. They launched assuming their products would be successful simply because AI is now everywhere.

However, while AI has not taken off in these hardware attempts, it is growing in the hardware we use every day, because it’s needed in the physical world. This shows how generative AI works best when integrated into devices that already fit into our lives, like our phones. Looking back, we can see how we were flooded with products that promised to replace the phones we rely on, yet these products barely made it past their first shipments.