Touched on the subject of wearables and pendants before, that is electronic devices that are intended to work with or separately from mobiles in order to… well… what, exactly?
So far the evidence for them being popular with consumers is thin on the ground. But now, prepare for more talk about them, because, that well known and very reliable technology ‘A.I.’ is being used to try to float these one more time! Okay, that’s not entirely correct. The Humane A.I. Pin, one of the first such devices had the term ‘A.I.’ in the name but it launched to negative reviews and never gained any momentum. But in the ‘A.I.’ saturated world of 2026 there’s going to be much more of a push.
Pendants and brooches packed with artificial intelligence abounded at CES 2026, using cameras and microphones to watch and listen through the day like a vigilant personal assistant.
The return of the wearable tech comes about a year after the discontinuation of a Humane AI Pin panned by reviewers after it was launched amid high expectations in early 2024.
It also comes as OpenAI chief Sam Altman and renowned industrial designer Jony Ive collaborate on a device for interacting with AI, expected to be ready by next year.
Not everyone is a fan of always-watching neckwear as a fashion accessory.
“Go make some real friends” became common graffiti on New York City subway ads for Friend brand AI pendants late last year to protest “surveillance capitalism.”
Very good. But those making such devices aren’t giving up.
Nonetheless, at CES in Las Vegas, gadget makers have pitched AI pendants as note-takers or ways to remember beautiful or important moments of each day.
Technical advances including improved chips have helped overcome early problems with poor battery life, buggy software, and stumbling conversations that tainted early pendant models.
China-based laptop titan Lenovo unveiled a prototype pendant from its Motorola subsidiary that allows voice control of its AI assistant Qira.
That we have a brain that can remember beautiful or important moment of each day is clearly beside the point. And also there’s other devices that can take notes, or photographs, what’s the name again, mobiles?
I get the demand for smartwatches and wrist-worn devices for health and fitness. Apparently such wrist worn devices take up much of the market for ‘wearable’ devices and almost all of us have wrists that are free for such devices. These make sense – they expand the function of wrist worn watches, something that has been with us for over 200 years. Devices in ears are also popular. One can make a case that all these add functionality to other devices. I’m sceptical about glasses and wearables clipped to clothing. The former because they’re so bulky and obvious (and as someone who wears contact lenses and glasses the latter are clunky even as it is and it’s a relief not to wear them. Anything heavier seems like a pointless and uncomfortable exercise). Those clipped to clothing seem hugely vulnerable.
Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps all these will work beautifully and be small enough to wear comfortably. Perhaps Apple is the corporation to do this. And yet think of the Apple Vision Pro, the VR headset that was going to revolutionise the VR headset market.
That’s not quite worked out that way.
Sales are sluggish, less than one million have been sold as of August last year and a successor is at least a year and a half away. It is a cautionary tale about what is possible, and what is not in tech.
Despite Apple’s effectively limitless resources in terms of research, finance, design and production they have been unable to miniaturise this to a point that it is consumer friendly. Perhaps it is never going to be consumer friendly, in so far as it is so profoundly individualistic in terms of it excluding the world and people around oneself.
This isn’t to say there are no use-case scenarios for such tech. In industry one can see immediate uses. Gaming too, perhaps. Perhaps some entertainments, though to a lesser degree.
Small wonder, though, if they’re pivoting back towards ‘wearables’. But even that seems excessive. For consumers who simply want devices that do a limited range of everyday functions all this seems… too much. Indeed, devices themselves these days seem… too much.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 