Much of the interest in generative AI over the past quarter has shifted toward wearables – and now there’s a new product that illustrates how we can get augmentation through tiny devices a la the “Internet of Things.”
It’s called the Limitless pendant, and it’s going to be sold for $499, although there’s currently a $100 discount on the site. Users will choose free or paid plans.
So what does this little thing do? Essentially, it listens to the user, and makes certain kinds of unstructured data more digestible. For example, you might find the pendant offering a summary of personal reflections, and reminding the user of the most important things on their to-do list for the day. Here’s a bit of the explanation from marketing materials:
“(The) pendant is an elegant, lightweight wearable that remembers what you say throughout the day from in-person meetings, impromptu conversations and personal insights.”
Spokespersons also showcase these value propositions: stay engaged hands-free, without writing things down, get good data retrieval, and send everything to a private cloud location.
You can see examples on the company’s website, where the model reminds an anonymous user to call the dentist, and get a diaper plan for the baby.
A Controversial Pivot
Curious about how this new wearable will be received, I went to the Reddit world to listen to what people have to say about the product.
What I realized was that some people know the company from its previous iteration as Rewind.ai, where there was a focus on human hearing and memory.
This is how founders characterize the invention of Rewind AI on that company site:
“Back in my 20s, my hearing got increasingly worse to the point that I needed a hearing aid. Although my normal hearing sense was gone, using the hearing aid felt like gaining a superpower. As humans, we’re constrained by the biological matter that we’re made of—oftentimes not appreciating enough what superpowers we already have and not knowing what superpowers we could have thanks to technology. Since that moment when I got the hearing aid, I’ve been on the hunt for technologies to augment human superpowers. In particular, I wondered, what if there were an equivalent for human memory? Human memory gets overridden by new experiences and generally worsens over time, so even after just a week, something like 90% of memories are lost. What if we could stop that? The answer is Rewind AI, a personalized AI to help you remember everything you’ve read, seen, and experienced.”
Now, some people who are evaluating Limitless are suggesting that the company was on a better track with Rewind, and that the Limitless wearable isn’t really anything unique, or that it lacks a moat in the market.
Others, though, are excited about using this kind of tool for comprehensive verbal memory of your conversations. It really illustrates the nature of unstructured data. There’s no kind of data less structured, in a way, than what we say to people throughout the day, unless you count things like ambient noise. In the past, we saw unstructured data mostly as non-labeled text, but now, with new AI, the sky’s the limit.
Fundraising and Stakeholders
We can also contrast the reported fundraising of the two companies to figure out how Limitless differs from Rewind.
Rewind raised $10 million in seed money in 2022, with stakeholders including Andreessen Horowitz and First Round Capital. By contrast, Limitless says it has over $33 million on a $350 million valuation, with Sam Altman also apparently on board.
Data Privacy for the Masses
Here’s one of the biggest potential questions from prospective users: what about privacy?
Limitless contends that the wearable data is “secure by design,” and explains how it uses standard industry encryption to protect what the device records.
“We never access your data or sell it to third parties without your permission,” spokespersons write. “Strict audit logs and code review procedures ensure your information remains secure. Data sent to third-party AI providers for transcription … is not used for third-party model training. It is deleted within 30 days.”
There’s also a lot of background in this video presentation by “Dan.”
“With Rewind, people loved how their data was safe from their employer, was safe from the government, safe from their software provider,” he says.
Big Interest
Clearly, there’s a lot of money wrapped up in the Limitless product. And it has some big names backing it. It will probably lead to significant disruption in a pretty new industry, and help us to ask – what do we really want from these personalized LLMs? What do we want them to help us do? And what is the risk/benefit analysis of allowing them to do more?
