It's hard to say whether any of them will deploy chatbots and agents well or in new and interesting ways. While the addition of AI might be enough to attract the investment needed to build a device, it might not be enough to get people to actually buy the thing. Chatbots and AI agent still doesn't offer enough use cases to justify people pinning them to their shirts. We are also at a time of AI saturation, where technology is present in everything. So what makes your AI headset special?
“That's the problem a lot of startups face; If AI is their differentiator, what will happen when everyone has it?” Sag said. “Now the stakes are on the table.”
Wearables and devices specifically designed to provide some AI-enabled service may seem like the next logical step in AI development, but so far the utility we get from they have not yet crossed any boundaries.
“The reality is we don't need specialized hardware for the types of features or use cases they're representing,” Ubrani said. “Your phone can do most of those things.”
In the space of a year, AI has gone from being a selling point to something akin to a slightly stronger form of vanilla.
Make a dent
Of course, there are success stories about AI hardware, e.g Meta Ban Ray Smart glasses have worked well by incorporating AI such as one of many features in a device that offers use cases—taking photos, listening to music—that go far beyond what AI can do on its own. (This is definitely going to be a year filled with smart glassesand CES is sure to be filled with them.)
Of course, Meta is one of the giant companies that has the resources to bring AI into its services. Smaller manufacturers may not have the financial means to compete, but they also feel pressure to get in on the game.
“It will be difficult to know how those smaller startups survive,” Sag said.
Sag says there are ways to stand out from the big devices and the combination of many other AI gadgets. Privacy, for example. Meta may have the most successful smart glasses today, but the company's platform is a data vacuum that sucks up almost every piece of information about its users that it can. Sag points towards competitors like Even reality or Looktech.AIThe smart glasses maker gives users extensive control over privacy settings and doesn't necessarily just send every bit of data back to the mother ship. He said such startups can use a safer approach to differentiate their products, offering users an alternative to big data mining platforms .
No matter how safe and secure a technology is, people will still want something that fundamentally benefits them.
“The next wave of this is like, what is AI doing for me right now besides telling me I have AI?” Sag said. “A lot of AI doesn't necessarily drive sales because it doesn't really change people's lives.”