His universally derided The AI pin was a flopso Humane now focuses on software. The company just released a video showing how its CosmOS software could work on other devices like a car, TV, and smart speaker as “an AI operating system built for a universe of connected devices.” The only problem is that software was a big part of what made the AI pin bad, and much of what Humane shows are “simulated experiences” for “illustrative purposes” rather than AI in the ‘real use.
The video begins with a person talking to CosmOS in the car (with the branding blurred), asking for takeout restaurant suggestions and when guests are arriving, and ordering him to turn up the thermostat. Once home, the user asks an unknown (again, blurred) smart speaker for a recipe and a soccer player’s score statistics from his smart TV. “I didn’t have to specify the player,” the person says. “CosmOS simply uses the context of what is on the screen to respond.”
Then, this AI individual notices that he has CosmOS on his phone and asks him to read an email and tell him if he needs to follow up on anything. After some back and forth, the AI finds space in the user’s calendar and schedules an RSVP appointment.
Humane notes that CosmoOS is device- and LLM-agnostic, so it can run on cars, mobile devices, PCs, wearables, and more. “And as we get closer to releasing our SDK to the public, developers and enterprises will easily be able to add and integrate their agent data and services into CosmOS, leveraging the powerful ecosystem to provide even more utility to all types of devices and platforms,” according to the voiceover.
If Humane sells its operating system as an AI option for third-party devices, it has stiff competition. As Cherlynn Low noted in our Engadget reviewits AI pin wasn’t much better than a Google search for information and was slower. While it had some useful features like context for follow-up questions, that’s the last of the things for any AI assistant in 2024. With all that, it seems like any company that builds the devices it shows off (cars, TVs, phones , etc. ) are more likely to consider OpenAI, Gemini or other players much more credible as an AI assistant.
