Humane shows off its wearable AI pin at Paris Fashion Week

Humane has quietly teased its forthcoming AI Pin at Coperni's Parish fashion show, and will unveil it fully on November 9, 2023.

For more than five years, Humane was the firm founded by ex-Apple executives that was definitely going to make something big, some day. Then for the start of what has become teasingly slow rollout, Humane revealed that it was making a new wearable that looks like the communicator badges in "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

In July 2023, the company announced that the device would be called the Humane Ai Pin. Despite one short demo which revealed some of its functions without really revealing its form, the device has remained a mystery.

However, black and white versions of the Humane Ai Pin has now been seen worn by models from the Paris-based fashion house Coperni, at their 2024 Spring Summer show at Paris Fashion Week.

"We have been admirers of Arnaud and Sebastien at Coperni for some time and our shared passion for the union of design, creativity and technology is at the heart of this collaboration," said Humane co-founders Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, Humane's founders in a statement.

"Our relationship with technology is changing profoundly, becoming even more personal as our devices morph into extensions of our bodies, minds and hearts," they continued. "We're excited to show the full capabilities of the device which we believe will usher in a new paradigm of ambient, AI-driven computing on November 9."

Humane describes the device as a "screenless, standalone device and software platform built from the ground up for AI." While not saying whether wearers need to tap the device and only then say things like "Picard to Enterprise," the company does say that there is no wake word "and therefore no 'always on' listening."

Humane has also repeated that the Pin doesn't need to be paired to a smartphone, and that it is powered by an unspecified Snapdragon processor by Qualcomm.

It's not known whether the November 9 unveiling will be an actual launch of the product. However, Humane has a "priority access" waitlist for people to be alerted when the device does go on sale.

Co-founders Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno met while working together on the iPad at Apple. Bongiorno was a director of software engineering, and Chaudhri a designer who was involved in developing OS X with Steve Jobs.

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12 Comments

williamh 1045 comments · 13 Years

About 1 year ago

My first reaction is that those people are full of themselves and this will be something that I do not like at all. However, I am not so stubborn that I will refuse to be surprised and delighted. I just don't think that will happen.

If it works how I think it will, we will soon have another term like "Glasshole" was used for Google Glass users to describe the users of this device.

gatorguy 24608 comments · 13 Years

williamh said:

My first reaction is that those people are full of themselves and this will be something that I do not like at all. However, I am not so stubborn that I will refuse to be surprised and delighted. I just don't think that will happen.

If it works how I think it will, we will soon have another term like "Glasshole" was used for Google Glass users to describe the users of this device.

If a head or body-worn AI device with a camera comes from Apple, will you still have the same "Glasshole" opinion?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMsQO5u7-NQ&t=16s

auxio 2762 comments · 19 Years

gatorguy said:

williamh said:

My first reaction is that those people are full of themselves and this will be something that I do not like at all. However, I am not so stubborn that I will refuse to be surprised and delighted. I just don't think that will happen.

If it works how I think it will, we will soon have another term like "Glasshole" was used for Google Glass users to describe the users of this device.

If a head or body-worn AI device with a camera comes from Apple, will you still have the same "Glasshole" opinion?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMsQO5u7-NQ&t=16s

As long as it's truly "privacy first" as he states. That was a big part of the stigma with Google Glass: what's happening to all of the audio and video being captured by it? Especially given that it was created by a company whose bottom line depends on knowing everything about you.

With devices like this in the works, I think that we really need laws that force companies to be open and honest about all of the data they collect about us, and exactly what it's being used for. Google has definitely become more transparent about it in the past 10 years, but only because people (and governments) have become more aware of it and demanded it. And the default behaviour still tends to be "opt out" rather than "opt in".

sflagel 864 comments · 11 Years

It does not appear that this device could do anything that a Smartwatch couldn't do, but there are a lot of things a Smartwatch can do that this can't.
(maybe take photos, but that's it; and I do hope that the Apple Watch will be able to take pics one day, even low res or just QR codes).

auxio said:

gatorguy said:

williamh said:

My first reaction is that those people are full of themselves and this will be something that I do not like at all. However, I am not so stubborn that I will refuse to be surprised and delighted. I just don't think that will happen.

If it works how I think it will, we will soon have another term like "Glasshole" was used for Google Glass users to describe the users of this device.

If a head or body-worn AI device with a camera comes from Apple, will you still have the same "Glasshole" opinion?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMsQO5u7-NQ&t=16s

As long as it's truly "privacy first" as he states. That was a big part of the stigma with Google Glass: what's happening to all of the audio and video being captured by it? Especially given that it was created by a company whose bottom line depends on knowing everything about you.

With devices like this in the works, I think that we really need laws that force companies to be open and honest about all of the data they collect about us, and exactly what it's being used for. Google has definitely become more transparent about it in the past 10 years, but only because people (and governments) have become more aware of it and demanded it. And the default behaviour still tends to be "opt out" rather than "opt in".

In the past two years, give or take, Google has generally been going with OPT-IN on privacy-related toggles, so they've seen the light. In fact I can't think of any personal data collection that's automatically taken without the user's OK beforehand, which does not mean to claim there aren't any but I don't believe there are. A prime example of Google's change in attitude is their Google Cloud Backup privacy-forward E2EE for Android phones which is on by default, and requires the user to actively tell Google they don't want their cloud backups encrypted. That's opposed to Apple requiring users opt-in for it as the default is off.

In any event, at least the bigger players do seem to be more transparent than they were a decade ago, and offer much clearer explanations of the how's, why's, and what's when putting privacy toggles in front of the user for a more informed choice. Apple has long been good about it, and yeah it's taken Apple and a few eyeballs from authorities to push Google down that same path, but today I'd say they both are pretty good about asking.

The bigger issue for me is the significant growth in "other" trackers and data aggregators over the last several years. Every time I go into Ghostery, which is regularly, there's dozens of new ones popping up. Those smaller ones tend to fly under the radar, but put a couple dozen together and there are massive files being collected on all of us, and worse than that, much of it is for sale. Literally for sale.

I fully expect Humane's product not to be one of those bad guys, and totally upfront about what they gather, and what they use it for, offering privacy toggles to those uncomfortable with bits and parts of it. Personally, I'm intrigued by the Humane AI pin.