Over the last few years, smart rings have entered the wearables space to offer an alternative form factor for health tracking and other connected functionality alongside fitness trackers and smartwatches. From the sound of recent announcements, it looks like a new type of digital jewelry will grace your finger: the ultra-compact AI ring.
We've seen dedicated AI hardware before, and some of them, like the Rabbit R1, the Friend necklace, and the Humane AI Pin, simply failed to function as promised and to meaningfully fit into people's lives. This upcoming crop of rings is taking a slightly different approach: enabling quick, discreet access to AI-powered services.
The Stream Ring, the Wizpr Ring, and the Pebble Index are all basically tiny microphones, differing in design and what they do when you speak into them in hushed tones.
The US$99 Pebble Index, which I covered recently, captures short voice notes – like an idea for your next podcast episode, or a reminder to pick up specific groceries. It then uses privacy-respecting offline AI models to transcribe them and either save them as text notes, or carry out basic actions like setting timers and reminders. You can then find these in your phone, or on a Pebble smartwatch.
Sandbar's $299 Stream Ring is somewhat similar, in that it records and transcribes your words. But it takes things further by interacting with that content "through thoughtful questions and intelligent responses” via a chatbot that uses an "Inner Voice" partially trained on your own voice. This works with earbuds, or onscreen via a mobile app without buds.
Then there's the crowdfunded $199 Wizpr Ring from Vtouch, which promises to instantly enable natural conversations with ChatGPT and other leading LLMs. You don't need to push a button on the ring or even utter a wake word: bringing the wearable close to your mouth and starting to speak does the trick. You'll hear responses come through your earbuds.
The company envisions users asking for directions while on the go, getting upcoming events in their daily agenda, controlling smart home devices, and talking to a chatbot like you normally would, with a lot less friction than before. It'll transcribe voice notes as well.
That's mostly it for the moment. These rings also promise to do a bit more like control music playback, and possibly run other actions in the future. But who are they for? Well, if you've ever enjoyed using a smartwatch to set a timer or record a voice note because that was more convenient than whipping out your phone, you might be into this. The AI ring-wearer is the sort of person who'll value the easier access to those tools, and the ability to use them without drawing attention.
The AI-focused angle makes sense too. It's been three years since ChatGPT launched back in November 2022, which means loads of people among its 800-million-strong user base have spent plenty of time getting used to querying it to understand their world, build ideas, and get things done, in lieu of other apps. Some of them might well appreciate a gadget that lets them start talking to their AI assistant almost as soon as they've got a thought to share.
My concern is these rings can largely be made redundant by wireless earbuds that people are already using to listen to music. If the whole point is to speak into them, earbuds are almost there: Apple's AirPods can invoke Siri with a wake word, and other brands' buds let you talk to AI assistants with a gesture. With that, it feels like earbuds are practically one over-the-air feature update away from mimicking an entire product category.
That being said, these rings can beam your thoughts over to AI models even when you're not wearing your earbuds. That feels like it could be marginally useful, especially if you benefit from enriching your personal chatbots with more contextual information that can later help with scheduling appointments and taking other actions on your behalf. But this use case might be a year or two away, and require AI services to offer more agentic capabilities to carry out instructions autonomously.
That's not to say these rings will be bad products, but they will have to be damn good at what they do to earn their keep, and enjoyable to use and live with. That means they'll have to deliver on durability, battery life, charging time, and reliable, bug-free performance. And lastly, there's pricing to think about. If these cost a lot, or require a subscription when people already pay for AI services (the Stream Ring has an optional $10 monthly plan to unlock advanced features), that might be a hard pill to swallow.
Oh, and they'll have to compete with other gadgetry for your digits, like Samsung's Galaxy Ring, which does all kinds of fitness tracking and other stuff through your phone.
For now, these devices don't offer a revolution in how you interact with AI, but rather marginal convenience. That could be fun for enthusiasts, but staying fashionable is going to prove just as hard as it was for skinny jeans.
