It's time to admit the 'AI gadget' era was a flop

For a moment back there it looked like the smartphone might be in trouble. Weird and (on paper) wonderful gadgets were popping up left, right and centre, claiming to offer a transformative experience by harnessing the power of AI. The splashiest examples had to be the Rabbit R1 and Humane AI Pin. But with the untimely and ugly death of the latter this week, it's time to call the AI gadget era what it was: an almighty flop.

Humane has announced that is is shutting down after being acquired by HP, and that its AI Pin device will stop connecting to its servers. In other words, the Pin is getting bricked. Oh, and don't expect a refund if you bought it more than 90 days ago.

In an 'Important Announcement' on its website, Humane announces it is "winding down the consumer Ai Pin as [its] business priorities have shifted. Your Ai Pin will continue to function normally until 12pm PST on February 28, 2025. After this date, it will no longer connect to Humane’s servers, and .Center access will be fully retired."

Early last year, we observed that a new genre of tech was emerging that was seemingly trying to be anything but a smartphones. We counted Apple's Vision Pro among them, but the most notable new contenders were the 'AI gadgets' – the Rabbit R1 and Humane Pin. But after going hands-on with the Rabbit device, it was clear this buggy gadget was no iPhone killer.

But while the Rabbit R1 might not have blown us away from a performance standpoint, the story of the Humane Pin is altogether more disastrous. The bricking of the device and lack of refund has left an incredibly sour taste for early adopters. "Feels like we've been duped," one Redditor laments, while another adds, "It's truly a middle finger. Especially because there is no way around it due to the server reliance." Others, however, are a little less surprised. "How anyone thought this would ever take off is beyond me. A niche device, poorly specced, to ‘solve’ a problem almost all of us already carry a solution for in our pockets. There’s a reason we don’t carry separate music players around with us anymore. It’s the same reason this was doomed from inception."

With the demise of the AI Pin, it seems clear that the opportunistic rise of AI related hardware was indeed a flop. In fact, that pretty much became clear when Apple announced Apple Intelligence. Companies like Humane and Rabbit might have scrambled to create dedicated hardware to facilitate the software aspect of AI, but it was clear to many that what they offered was essentially an app. Sure, Apple Intelligence hasn't has the most auspicious start either, but at least it isn't asking us to carry another gadget in our pockets.