Struggling with what to get the AI-obsessed tech geek in your life for Christmas? I may have the answer: Have you thought of a “life-logger”?
If you believe the tech bros, AI’s centre of gravity is moving from screens to our bodies. With the delightful euphemism, “life-logging,” tech companies are marketing a range of wearable AI devices that record the audio of your entire day, producing summaries, notes or transcripts at the end of it. Which raises the question: have you lived if you haven’t logged?
While buying an “external-memory” or “second brain” (more excellent marketing terms) could have benefits, they may be offset by the obvious Black-Mirrorish pitfalls.
The most hyped of these products was the $699 Humane AI Pin, founded by ex-Apple designers, which flopped and sold its assets in February to HP. But never fear, there are others and they are fast winning investment from the big guns.
Bee, a company that sells a $50 AI wristband that “turns your moments into meaning” was bought by Amazon in July for an undisclosed sum. Limitless, which makes a $299 AI pendant, was acquired by Meta just a few weeks ago. There is also Plaud, which claims to have 1.5 million users of its £126 recorders and Omi’s $89 big button pendant that you can stick — where else — to your temple.
Could 2026 be the year such wearable AI devices really take off? Limitless co-founder Dan Siroker has claimed: “We’re no longer working on a weird fringe idea. We’re building a future that now seems inevitable.”
Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, thinks so too. He has partnered with the legendary Apple designer Jony Ive, buying his start-up in May for $6.5 billion. Their planned AI product is heavily under wraps, but judging by Altman’s hints, it takes this idea of “life-logging” to the next level.
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Altman describes the iPhone as “the crowning achievement of consumer products” , but using it, he said, is stressful. “I feel like I am walking through Times Square in New York and constantly just dealing with all the little indignities along the way: flashing lights in my face, tension going here, people bumping into me.”
Instead, the alternative screen-free device being dreamt up by OpenAI, should make us feel like we are “sitting in the most beautiful cabin by a lake and in the mountains and just enjoying the peace and calm … just letting us focus on other stuff,” Altman mused. Something which has “incredible contextual awareness of your whole life”.
It reflects a future being widely discussed in tech: “Ambient AI”, something which works in the background of everyday life, listening and interpreting what’s happening without you having to use an app or actively prompt it. Then, like Santa’s little helper, it takes helpful actions without interrupting the user.
A pen? A pendant? What could this relaxing wearable ChatGPT powered OpenAI thingamabob be? Something for next year’s Christmas list.
If this all sounds a bit woo-woo, Google is launching AI glasses powered by Gemini in 2026. There will be a range with no screen and one with a display on the lenses. This is its second brave foray into spectacles. Back in 2013 it went over its skis when it launched Google Glass, pulled shortly afterwards on privacy concerns. Life-loggers take note.
Meta is also planning an expansion of its AI glasses at the start of next year, and has poached Apple’s designer Alan Dye, in its quest to “bring personal superintelligence to everyone”. It is a lucrative market. HSBC estimates that about 77 million pairs of smart glasses could be sold in 2030, valuing the sector at $36 billion.
In other wearable news, Apple may appear to be lagging behind in the AI race, but the doyenne of tech hardware’s live-translating AirPods are already in the shops.
So, there is lots to look forward to in the wacky wearable AI year ahead. And most obviously, it gives Father Christmas an easy way to monitor our every move and find out who’s on the naughty list.
Katie Prescott is Technology Business Editor of The Times