Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 11/09 – The First AI Wearable

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

We’re getting our first look at the first ever AI hardware product from Humane today. Once Disney swallows Hulu it’s going to create one app to stream them all. Samsung joins the AI race. The Esports world continues to blow up. And a judge has ruled that your car can continue reading your text messages legally. Sponsors: Nutrisense.com/ride and code ride Links: Exclusive leak: all the details about Humane’s AI Pin, which costs $699 and has OpenAI integration (The Verge) Disney+, Hulu Merged App to Launch Next Month for Bundle Subscribers, Bob Iger Says (Variety) No More Phone Number Swaps: Signal Messaging App Now Testing Usernames (PCMag) The Overwatch League is officially dead: Activision Blizzard is 'transitioning' away from its groundbreaking esports league as teams reportedly vote to withdraw (PC Gamer) Court rules automakers can record and intercept owner text messages (The Record) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the TechMeme right home for Thursday, November 9th, 2023. I'm Brian McCullough today. We're getting our first look at the first ever AI hardware product from Humane. Once Disney swallows Hulu, it's going to create one app to stream them all. Samsung joins the AI race. The e-sports world continues to blow up. And a judge has ruled that your car can continue reading your text messages legally. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. So Humane is supposed to debut its AI. wearable product today, though for the life of me, I couldn't figure out when the launch event was actually going to happen. Thankfully, details have leaked, so let me give you the leaks,

and we can adjust things if the reality doesn't end up matching what the leaks say. The leaks say the product is called AI PIN. It's $699, but it also requires a $24 a month subscription because it needs a phone number, a data plan, and you get cloud storage and access to Microsoft and Open AI AI models. Quoting the verge. The pin itself is a square device that magnetically clips to your clothes or other surfaces. The clip is more than just a magnet, though. It's also a battery pack, which means you can swap in new batteries throughout the day to keep the pin running. We don't know how long a single battery lasts, but the device ships with two battery boosters. It's powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and uses a camera, depth,

and motion sensors to track and record its surroundings. It has a built-in speaker, which Humane calls a Personic speaker and can connect to Bluetooth headphones. Since there's no screen, Humane has come up with new ways to interact with the pin. It's primarily meant to be a voice-based device, but there's also that green laser projector we've seen in demos, which can project information onto your hand. You can also hold objects up to the camera and interact with the pin through gestures, as there's a touchpad somewhere on the device. The pin isn't always recording or even listening for a wake word, instead requiring you to manually activate it in some way. It has a trust light, which blinks on whenever the pin is recording. The documents show that Humane wants the pin to be

considered a fully standalone device rather than an accessory to your smartphone. $699 gets you the pin, a charger, and those two battery boosters, but the real story is that it costs $24 per month for a Humane subscription, which includes a phone number and sell data on Humane's own branded wireless service that runs on T-Mobile's network, cloud storage for photos and videos, and the ability to make unlimited queries of AI models, although we're not sure which ones specifically. The PIN's operating system is called Cosmos, and rather than operate as a collection of apps, Humane seems to be imagining a more seamless system that can call up various AIs and other tools as you need them. It sounds a bit like ChatGPT's plugin system, through which

you can attach new features or data to your chatbot experience, which tracks with reports that the PIN would be powered by GPT4. The documents we've seen say the PIN can write messages that sound like you, and there's a feature that will summarize your email inbox for you. The PIN can also translate languages and identify food to provide nutritional information. There is support for title music streaming, which involves an AI DJ that picks music for you based on your current context. It will also offer AI-centric photography features, but it's not clear what that means. Eman clearly intends the PIN to be a self-contained and simple wearable, but there is a way to manage the device, a tool called Humane.com, which is where you're meant to set up and customize your device before you start wearing it.

It's unclear whether this is a website or a phone app, but it's how you access the notes, videos, and photos you collect while you're wearing the pin, end quote. I guess we'll have to follow up on this tomorrow if they give us answers like, you know, when it'll ship and stuff like that. But also, I'll be curious to see what the demo was actually like. Bob Eiger says Disney plans to launch an app combining Disney Plus and Hulu in a beta in December of 23 ahead of an official launch in spring of 2024. Quoting Variety, Disney still needs to close its deal with Comcast to buy out NBC Universal's 33% stake in Hulu. In a filing last week, Disney said it would pay at least $8.61 billion to Comcast for the Hulu stake with the final price tag, which could be much higher,

to be based on an assessment of Hulu's market value by each. parties bankers. We remain on track to roll out a more unified one app experience domestically making extensive general entertainment content available to bundle subscribers via Disney Plus. Iger said on the Mouse House's earnings call for the September quarter, a beta version of the Disney Plus Hulu app will launch in December for subscribers of the two-service bundle, giving parents time to set up parental controls, according to Iger, who explained that Disney Plus customers will be able to access adult-oriented Hulu content, ahead of the official launch in spring 2024 around late March. The company expects Hulu on Disney

Plus to result in increased engagement, greater ad revenue, reduced customer acquisition costs, and lower churn, Eiger said. Iger's comments come after he announced earlier this year that the media conglomerate was prepping a one app experience in the U.S. that incorporates Hulu content into Disney Plus. At the time, he said, the new combination offering would launch by the end of 2020, available to customers who subscribe to both streaming services. Disney offers the price-discounted bundle of Disney Plus and Hulu with ads for $9.99 per month and $1999 per month without ads, but currently customers must use separate apps to stream each one. The combination of Disney Plus and Hulu into one app will also potentially pave the way for Disney to launch the Hulu brand

globally. The Disney operated Hulu service is available only in the U.S. In Japan, the brand is licensed to Nippon TV, the Standing Theory on Wall Street. is that Disney, even after securing operational control over Hulu, has avoided launching it outside the U.S. in order not to increase Hulu's value, which would mean paying more to buy out Comcast's stake, end quote. For the first time, Signal has begun testing usernames, letting users set the phone number link to their Signal account as private and not share the number on their signal profile, quoting PCMag. Signal kicked off the public test today through a new beta build available in its community forums. After rounds of internal testing, we have hit the point where

we think the community that powers these forums can help us test even further before public launch, says Signal VP of Engineering Jim O'Leary. The development is a big deal since Signal, an end-to-end encrypted messaging app has long required users to sign up with a phone number. That same number also needs to be shared in order to message other users on the app. This can be problematic since sharing your phone number exposes you to privacy and hacking risks. For example, a contact on Signal could choose to call and message your number over an unencrypted cellular network or pass off the number to someone else. In response, Signal has been trying to develop username as far back as 2019. What they'll do is allow people to use Signal without giving anyone else their phone number.

Signal Foundation President Meredith Whitaker told Time Magazine in September of 2022, so you can give someone your username and someone can connect with you on Signal via your username without ever knowing your phone number. added. The test is launching for Android, iOS, and desktop users, and works by pairing the username, quote, with a set of digits and aren't shared on your profile. According to a screenshot of the system, it looks like users will be able to share user names as a unique QR code. In addition, users will be able to turn off phone number discovery, making their username the primary contact point to message them on Signal. But for now, Signal is rolling out usernames through a staging beta build, which also imposes several major limitations.

Anybody you wish to talk with in staging needs to be registered in staging as well, O'Leary said, and it's likely that push notifications won't work as well or potentially at all during your testing, end quote. Samsung has announced Galaxy AI, a comprehensive mobile AI experience that includes a translation feature called AI Live Translate Call, coming early next year, they say, quoting the verge. Samsung wants to make sure you know that it cares about AI too. In a new blog post, the company previewed what it calls a new era of Galaxy AI coming to its smartphones and detailed a forthcoming feature that will use artificial intelligence to translate phone calls in real time. Samsung's live translate feature, which the company is calling

AI live translate call, will be built into the company's native phone app. Samsung says audio and text translations will appear in real time as you speak and that the translations will happen on device. The company says Galaxy AI is coming early next year, so it seems likely that Galaxy AI features will be included with the Samsung Galaxy S-24 lineup of smartphones. Those phones are rumored to launch in 2024. The company also reportedly demonstrated is generative AI model called GAUSE at an event this week, which will apparently power features on mobile devices beginning next year. So I'm taking that to mean that Gouse will be a key part of the Galaxy S-24 lineup too. AI-powered features seem like they're becoming the next

battleground for smartphone makers. Google, for example, has a suite of AI-powered tools to help you edit and improve photos with its Pixel 8 lineup. Apple is reportedly spending a lot of money every day to train AI, and I have to imagine that all that investment will show up in some AI-powered features for iPhones, and smartphone makers will soon have to compete with AI-focused hardware products like Humane's cellular-enabled AI pin, end quote. The nuclear winter in the once hot space of e-sports continues with word that Activision Blizzard plans to transition away from the Overwatch League to evolve the esports competition into what it's calling a new direction. Exiting teams may get $6 million in compensation. Earlier this year, Activision Blizzard expressed doubt about the long-term future of the Overwatch League and said its efforts to maintain the city-based pro-esports league. may prove unsuccessful. That has turned out to be the case as Activision confirmed today that the

Overwatch League, as we know it, is finished. Announced in 2016, the Overwatch League was a groundbreaking idea modeled after conventional pro sports leagues. City-based teams would compete in seasonal home-and-away matches, eventually leading into a playoff series and world championship. But high startup costs, initial base franchise fees were reportedly $20 million, contributed to a slow start, and just a couple years after it went live, the league was battered by the COVID-19 pandemic, which quashed its live-spectator ambitions. The situation took a turn for the worse in 2021, following allegations of widespread discrimination and sexual misconduct at Activision Blizzard, which led multiple major sponsors to end their support for the league. The loss of

a publishing partner in China, a situation that still hasn't been rectified, only added to the woes. Activision acknowledged in a May filing with the SEC that it faced, quote, headwinds, which are negatively impacting the operations and potentially the longevity of the Overwatch League and that efforts to address them could result in significant costs and may prove unsuccessful, end quote. A month later, the company said in a quarterly financial report that at the end of the current Overwatch League season, teams would vote on an amended operating agreement, and that if they did not vote to continue operating under the new terms, each team would receive a termination fee of $6 million, and that would be the end of it. In a statement provided to PC

gamer, Activision Blizzard confirmed that the Overwatch League will not return in its current form. We are transitioning from the Overwatch League and evolving competitive Overwatch in a new direction, a spokesperson said, we are grateful to everyone who made Owl possible and remain focused on building our vision of a revitalized e-sports program. We will share details with you in the near future, end quote. It's not necessarily a full stop for Overwatch as an e-sport, though. One of the teams said in a withdrawal announcement that the ownership group is, quote, eager to share more about our vision for Toronto Defiant and our plans to return to Overwatch Esports. There have also been reports that Activision Blizzard is in talks with third

parties to operate a return league in 2024. Whatever happens, the city-based format that was the league's defining foundation is gone, and what will take its place is anyone's guess, end quote. Finally today, a U.S. judge has ruled that automakers' use of on-board infotainment systems to record and intercept owners' texts and call logs does not violate Washington State law. Quoting the record, a federal judge on Tuesday refused to bring back a class action lawsuit alleging four auto manufacturers had violated Washington State's privacy laws by using vehicles on-board infotainment systems to record and intercept customers' private text messages and mobile phone call logs. The Seattle-based appellate judge ruled that the practice

does not meet the threshold for an illegal privacy violation under state law, handing a big win to automakers Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen, and General Motors, which are the defendants in five related class action suits focused on the issue. One of those cases against Ford had been dismissed on appeal previously. The plaintiffs in the four live cases had appealed a prior judge's dismissal, but the appellate judge ruled Tuesday that the interception and recording of mobile phone activity did not meet the Washington Privacy Act's standard that a plaintiff must prove that, quote, his or her business, his or her person, or his or her reputation has been threatened. In an example of the issues at stake, plaintiffs in one of the five cases filed suit against Honda in 2021 are arguing that beginning

in at least 2014, infotainment systems in the company's vehicles began downloading and storing a copy of all text messages on smartphones when they were connected to the system. In Annapolis, Maryland-based company, Burla Corporation, provides the technology to, some car manufacturers, but does not offer it to the general public, the lawsuit said. Once messages are downloaded, Burla's software makes it impossible for vehicle owners to access their communications and call logs, but does provide law enforcement with access, the suit said. Many car manufacturers are selling car owners' data to advertisers as a revenue-boasting tactic, according to earlier reporting by recorded future news.

Automakers are exponentially increasing the number of sensors they place in their cars every year with little regulation of the practice." End quote. Nothing for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.