Humane’s Ai Pin has some in the tech world scratching their heads

• Humane’s wearable Ai Pin is finally here — and some tech workers don’t seem to be impressed.
• Some tech workers went to X to criticize the Ai Pin’s design, features, and latest demo. 
• The criticisms come as techies debate whether Humane’s Ai Pin will be the iPhone of the AI era. 

Humane’s highly anticipated Ai Pin is finally here — and some people in tech don’t have nice things to say about it.

Humane — which was founded by ex-Apple designers Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, who are now married — officially launched Ai Pin on Thursday. It’s a screenless, standalone AI device that can attach to your clothes.

For $699 — plus a $24 monthly subscription fee — users can use the pin’s AI capabilities to project text onto their hands, translate voice messages into different languages, and even track their macros.

While some onlookers in tech said Humane’s Ai pin “offers a bold vision for the future,” potentially changing the way humans interact with devices, others were quick to turn to X — formerly Twitter — to express their skepticism.

“While there are some undoubtedly novel new features in its interfaces, I think ‘AI hardware’ may turn out to be a dead end,” Casey Newton, founder of tech blog Platformer who said he’d tried Humane’s Ai pin,” wrote on X.

Humane didn’t immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment before publication.

Some techies appear to be complaining about the Ai Pin’s design.

Avi Schiffmann, who self-identifies as a “wearable AI founder,” wrote on X that pins and clips pull on your clothing — referencing the demo where Chaudhri’s shirt appears to be sagging where the device is placed. He said that could be uncomfortable and potentially stand out too much. Another X user said they’d prefer if the device were a necklace.

In term of Ai Pin’s features, other tech types have concerns around practicality. In response to the demo, Ben Kylak, who says he was a former designer at Apple, wrote on X that the text projected onto Choudri’s hand “looks mostly illegible” and that the gestures needed to control what’s displayed are “likely to be painful” on the palm.

On the question of whether Humane’s Ai Pin will be the iPhone of the AI era, some techies don’t think the device is anywhere close to replacing the smartphone.

“I don’t think this is going to cut it compared to whipping out my phone…” Liron Shapira, a self-identified AI skeptic, wrote on X in response to the Ai pin demo. “Cool experiment though.”

Some even made jabs at Humane’s demo for being what they deemed a snooze fest.

“This demo feels artificial and lifeless for such a potentially revolutionary piece of tech,” Joseph Tsar, who says he’s building an AI startup, wrote on X.

Despite the critiques, some members of the tech community wrote that the Ai Pin is a “neat concept” that “embodies the essence of invention.”

Humane’s Ai Pin isn’t the only AI gadget getting attention. In September, Meta announced its new AI-powered Ray-Ban smart glasses that start at $299.

As for whether AI devices like Humane’s Ai pin will create a sea change in the tech industry — only time will tell.