After watching other attempts at wearable AI crash and burn, Apple thinks it can do better with its own Apple Intelligence-powered wearable pin idea.
While the AI industry has certainly grown over the years, bringing it to a wearable format similar to a Star Trek communicator hasn't worked out well. Undaunted by previous failures in the field, Apple is rumored to be working on its own concept on wearable AI.
According to people familiar with the project speaking to The Information, Apple is developing an AI wearable pin. It's an early-stage project that could easily be cancelled, but Apple is apparently trying to bring it to market at a much faster rate than its other secret projects.
Supposedly about the size of an AirTag, it's said to resemble a flat, circular disk with an aluminum and glass shell. It will have two cameras at the front, consisting of standard and wide-angle lenses, for capturing images and photos near to the user.
It will also include a trio of microphones and a speaker. Power is rumored to be provided via a magnetic inductive charging interface on the rear, similar to the Apple Watch.
While the engineers plan to make it similar to the AirTag in terms of size, if not thickness, it will sport one thing AirTag lacks: a physical button.
Current release plans for the pin is for a 2027 release at the earliest. There are also said to be plans to mass produce the pin to the tune of 20 million units.
Not the only AI play
An AI pin wasn't on the bingo card for Apple rumors in 2026, but it's not the only thing believed to be under development at Apple.
There's Apple Glass, which is expected to provide similar audio and camera features in a pair of smartglasses, possibly by the end of 2026. It could also go one further and add AR functionality too, which the rumor mill thinks could happen in 2027.
For people who don't wear glasses, there is also the prospect of AirPods with built-in cameras. Providing the same core components as the Pin but in earphone form, they could rely on processing on a nearby iPhone, feeding back responses directly into the user's ears.
More of an outlier but also highly rumored about is the Apple Ring. A smart ring has been a possibility for quite a while, but more considered as a peripheral for control rather than an AI device in its own right.
The AI pin is a possibility on the same level as the others. But equally, it may never come to market at all.
A hard problem to crack
Just like any other tech company on the market, Apple could come up with a successful AI pin. However, the efforts so far haven't lived up to the hype at all.
Humane's AI Pin serves as a warning to the industry.
The Humane AI Pin, made by former Apple executives, crashed and burned despite having a lot of goodwill behind the effort. However, by February 2025, owners of the $700 device who also shelled out $24 per month on a subscription were left holding a useless tech artifact.
The Rabbit R1 tried to be a less premium, more populus-focused alternative, which also suffered from an extremely poor start in life. Somehow, despite the wreckage of Humane's effort, the Rabbit R1 is still hanging around, running on updated software that makes it more useful than at launch.
But even so, it has never really cracked the market. None have sold in high-enough numbers to be more than just an interesting device.
Neither device managed to do well enough to replace the iPhone as the go-to informational device.
And, there is another contender — Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have created a prototype for the first OpenAI device, also expected in 2027. The details of what the device actually is remain unknown for the moment, but it's hard not to think of anything other than smartglasses or some form of AI pin.
Apple certainly isn't alone in the field, but it's still anyone's guess as to whether it will be an actual success or not. It has the resources, the design experience, and the massive marketing and manufacturing capabilities needed for the product, but it's still a gamble, even to Apple.
