“Truly a middle finger”: Humane bricking $700 AI Pins with limited refunds – Ars Technica
Humane’s showing how not to treat early adopters.
After launching its AI Pin in April 2024 and reportedly seeking a buyout by May 2024, Humane is shutting down. Most of the people who bought an AI Pin will not get refunds for the devices, which debuted at $700, dropped to $500, and will be bricked on February 28 at noon PT.At that time, AI Pins, which are lapel pins with an integrated AI voice assistant, camera, speaker, and laser projector, “will no longer connect to Humane’s servers,” and “all customer data, including personal identifiable information… will be permanently deleted from Humane’s servers,” according to Humane’s FAQ page. Humane also stopped selling AI pins as of yesterday and canceled any orders that had been made but not yet fulfilled. Humane said it is discontinuing the AI Pin because it’s “moving onto new endeavors.”Those new endeavors include selling off key assets, including the AI Pin’s CosmOS operating system and intellectual property, including over 300 patents and patent applications, to HP for $116 million, HP announced on Tuesday. HP expects the acquisition to close this month.Notably, Humane raised $241 million to make its pin and was reportedly valued at $1 billion before launch. Last year, Humane was seeking a sale price of $750 million to $1 billion, according to Bloomberg.But the real failure is in the company’s treatment of its customers, who will only get a refund if they “are still within the 90-day return window from their original shipment date,” Humane’s FAQ page says. “All device shipments prior to November 15th, 2024, are not eligible for refunds. All refunds must be submitted by February 27th, 2025.”AI Pins “will no longer function as a cellular device or connect to Humane’s servers. This means no calls, texts, or data usage will be possible,” according to the startup, which noted that users can’t port their phone number to another device or wireless carrier. Some offline features “like battery level” will still work, Humane said, but overall, the product will become $700 e-waste for most owners in nine days.The shutdown leaves customers in the lurch, which has resulted in outrage among Humane’s small but invested customer base.One Reddit user, for example, wrote on the Humane subreddit that they “feel like we’ve been duped.”The announcement has also made some apparent users cynical about the intentions of the San Francisco firm, which former Apple executives launched in 2018.“It’s truly a middle finger. Especially because there is no way around it due to the server reliance. I believe this was their plan all along. Sell and [get out],” one Reddit user said.Similarly, another Reddit user said the lack of refunds and server access were “a blow” to early adopters, saying, “Humane won by selling. HP won a new tech. All consumers got fucked…”There will likely be an effort to jailbreak the AI Pin without Humane’s approval so that the gadget can be open-sourced, allowing people to continue to use the pins they already paid for. This has happened with other gadgets that have recently seen functionality ripped away due to corporate failures, such as Spotify’s Car Thing.A startup could be forgiven for trying a new product that doesn’t take off. But Humane’s reported failure to perform and respond to due diligence ahead of AI Pin’s launch complicates the picture, especially for those who believed in the AI-centric wearable.Humane, founded by Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, reportedly pushed out its pin while ignoring negative feedback. A June report from The New York Times that included interviews of “23 current and former employees, advisers, and investors” pointed to Humane founders overlooking criticisms such as poor battery life and power consumption. The paper reported that a “senior software engineer was dismissed after raising questions about the product.” Bongiorno reportedly held a meeting about responding to criticism from post-release reviews, but this was after the device already garnered a reputation for being, as The Verge put it, “thoroughly unfinished and so totally broken in so many unacceptable ways.”Beyond general skepticism about the need for people to wear an AI device on their chest, Humane never proved its pitch of AI Pins replacing smartphones. The app-free device relied solely on voice command and cost a lot, including a $24 monthly fee for cell service. That made it extremely polarizing, even by emerging tech standards. Early reviews worsened the perception, with YouTuber Marques Brownlee dubbing it “The Worst Product I’ve Ever Reviewed… For Now.”In August, The Verge reported that Humane saw over $1,000,000 in returned product and that AI Pin returns were outpacing Humane product sales, which reportedly totaled about $9,000,000 at the time. Humane’s problems got worse in November when Humane recalled the AI Pin’s portable charging case due to a fire risk from an overheating lithium polymer battery.Even though Humane is managing to sell some parts of its business to HP, it seems the company is not even interested in the pin. HP’s announcement primarily highlighted AI software and made no mention of Humane hardware. Tuan Tran, HP’s president of technology and innovation, said in a statement that CosmOS and former Humane engineers will help make “an intelligent ecosystem across all HP devices, from AI PCs to smart printers and connected conference rooms.”Humane also continued to push the pins despite reportedly seeking a buyer since May, and it gave AI Pin owners just 10 days to reckon with their expensive devices being bricked. In addition, the limited refund window seems like a slap in the face to people who were willing to spend extra money to be early adopters.The AI Pin will also fuel a cloud of skepticism already encircling AI products. In fact, “multiple startup founders” are already second-guessing releasing AI gadgets in response to the AI Pin’s downfall, The Verge reported today.New AI gadgets will have to overcome a reputation of lost money, e-waste, unfulfilled promises, and misleading hype before reaching customers. But at least there are some lessons learned from the AI Pin. The first one is to fix critical problems before you start charging customers.Ars Technica has been separating the signal from
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