{"id":1962333,"date":"2026-05-28T18:20:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T15:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1962333"},"modified":"2026-05-28T18:20:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T15:20:15","slug":"the-first-successful-ai-wearable-wont-be-your-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1962333","title":{"rendered":"The First Successful AI Wearable Won\u2019t Be Your Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/app\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Oura-Ring-5-7-1200×675.jpeg”]<\/p>\n

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Within some tech circles not so long ago, there was excitement around the concept of a wearable AI \u201ccompanion\u201d; essentially, a chatbot built into a compact piece of hardware, which users would carry around with them on their person. The idea was marketed as a mix between an ever-present conversation partner, a personalized note-taker, and, most memorably\u2014or cringe-ily, depending on your views\u2014an artificial \u201c<\/span>Friend<\/span>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyone who rode a New York City subway in the last few months of 2025 knows how that idea played out. Friend, which launched a massive marketing campaign throughout the city\u2019s subway system to promote its AI pendant, received widespread public backlash to its billboards, which many people interpreted as promoting artificial relationships over actual, human-to-human connections. The ads were widely defaced throughout the city. (One memorably wholesome bit of graffiti spotted on a Friend ad spotted in Brooklyn in October simply read: \u201cCall your mom.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n

Whether Friend\u2019s subway marketing debacle was a net loss for the company is up for debate; all publicity is good publicity, as the old saying goes. But what doesn\u2019t seem debatable at this point is that by and large, most people just weren\u2019t thrilled by the idea of wearing\u2014and being surveilled by\u2014a portable AI chatbot. Witness also the fall of Humane\u2019s AI Pin, which was similarly hyped for a brief period as the harbinger of a major new tech trend, before it too failed to catch on with consumers. Humane later sold its assets to HP.<\/span><\/p>\n

The wearable AI dream isn\u2019t dead<\/b><\/h3>\n

It\u2019d be premature, however, to conclude from the failure of the AI Pin and the public backlash to Friend that AI wearables are a lost cause. After all, it\u2019s been less than four years since the public debut of ChatGPT, the starting gun that launched the AI race. Only a very small handful of tech developers have managed to monetize their proprietary LLMs, which means there are still a lot of unanswered questions around what the next generation of AI-powered products will look like.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some in Silicon Valley, including major players like <\/span>Apple<\/span> and Meta, continue to believe in the practical and commercial potential of AI-powered wearables. But whatever form those new wearables take, they almost certainly won\u2019t be \u201ccompanions,\u201d <\/span>\u00e0 la<\/span><\/i> Friend and Humane. The public verdict on that model has been resoundingly clear.<\/span><\/p>\n

One alternative route that the evolution of AI wearables could take is towards personalized health. Indeed, you can see that evolution is already taking place.<\/span><\/p>\n

The <\/span>Oura Ring 5<\/span>, available for preorder today and starting at $399, comes with a built-in AI assistant called <\/span>Oura Advisor<\/span> (which the company first debuted last year). While most people associate the Oura Ring with sleep tracking, the new smart ring is largely being marketed as a personalized fitness tracker and health coach. Through an integration with the Oura app, users can receive personal health recommendations from the AI assistant as well as human medical professionals.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The launch of the Oura Ring 5 arrives on the heels of Google\u2019s release of the Fitbit Air, which also comes with a personalizable, LLM-powered assistant called Health Coach. (Google acquired Fitbit in 2021 for a reported $2.1 billion.) It also comes with a new, AI-heavy app called Google Health, which <\/span>hasn\u2019t gotten off to the best start<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Other AI-powered wearables geared towards health optimization abound. Some smart headbands, for example, conduct EEG scans while you sleep to measure sleep quality. And Meta\u2019s Ray-Ban smart glasses\u2014probably the most popular (and controversial) AI-centered wearable device on the market right now\u2014come with some health-oriented features, including one that allows you to <\/span>track everything you eat<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chatbot health assistants<\/b><\/h3>\n

Oura and Fitbit have, of course, always been geared towards health and fitness, and it was only a matter of time before they started leaning more heavily into AI, so we shouldn\u2019t be surprised that built-in AI health assistants are becoming a hot new trend in the wearable tech space. At the same time, however, some major AI developers have begun investing more in personalized health features, in direct response to trends surrounding users\u2019 interactions with chatbots.<\/span><\/p>\n

In December, for example, a <\/span>report<\/span> published by Microsoft showed that \u201chealth and fitness\u201d was the third most common category of user prompt fed to Copilot, the company\u2019s flagship AI chatbot (the first and second most common types of queries were \u201ctechnology\u201d and \u201cwork and career,\u201d respectively); Microsoft introduced <\/span>Copilot Health<\/span> in March.<\/span><\/p>\n

Data from OpenAI published in January by <\/span>Axios<\/span><\/i>showed<\/span> that forty million people around the world were using ChatGPT for medical advice; OpenAI debuted <\/span>ChatGPT Health<\/span> and <\/span>ChatGPT for Healthcare<\/span> later that same week.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Risks and opportunities<\/b><\/h3>\n

There are plenty of well-founded concerns that come with using AI as a personalized health coach, whether that\u2019s through a wearable device or a chatbot on your phone. Chief among them is: What\u2019s actually happening to that data? How is it being used by the companies that own the devices, who can monitor it, and to what end? And in the case of chatbots, the risks of hallucination\u2014giving users bogus information as if it were fact\u2014are compounded when conversations center on personal health.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like the other hot-button legal and ethical conundrums posed by AI, it will take time for such questions to be resolved. But the growing interest in personalized health among tech companies signals what\u2019s likely to become a key zone of investment both for the leading AI labs looking to monetize LLMs, and for newer startups with their eye towards getting a head start on the next big tech trend.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, all of those companies will be guided by the lesson of Friend and Humane\u2019s AI Pin: If AI wearables ever go mainstream, it almost certainly won\u2019t be as a \u201ccompanion,\u201d but rather as a much more limited tool, designed for a more specific purpose. For better or worse, plenty of people will still turn to AI for therapy, relationship advice, and yes, even as a balm for loneliness. But most of them don\u2019t want to publicly advertise their personal issues in a conspicuous gadget hanging from their neck.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

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Within some tech circles not so long ago, there was excitement around the concept of a wearable AI \u201ccompanion\u201d; essentially, a chatbot built into a compact piece of hardware, which users would carry around with them on their person. The idea was marketed as a mix between an ever-present conversation partner, a personalized note-taker, and, most memorably\u2014or cringe-ily, depending on your views\u2014an artificial \u201c<\/span>Friend<\/span>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyone who rode a New York City subway in the last few months of 2025 knows how that idea played out. Friend, which launched a massive marketing campaign throughout the city\u2019s subway system to promote its AI pendant, received widespread public backlash to its billboards, which many people interpreted as promoting artificial relationships over actual, human-to-human connections. The ads were widely defaced throughout the city. (One memorably wholesome bit of graffiti spotted on a Friend ad spotted in Brooklyn in October simply read: \u201cCall your mom.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n

Whether Friend\u2019s subway marketing debacle was a net loss for the company is up for debate; all publicity is good publicity, as the old saying goes. But what doesn\u2019t seem debatable at this point is that by and large, most people just weren\u2019t thrilled by the idea of wearing\u2014and being surveilled by\u2014a portable AI chatbot. Witness also the fall of Humane\u2019s AI Pin, which was similarly hyped for a brief period as the harbinger of a major new tech trend, before it too failed to catch on with consumers. Humane later sold its assets to HP.<\/span><\/p>\n

The wearable AI dream isn\u2019t dead<\/b><\/h3>\n

It\u2019d be premature, however, to conclude from the failure of the AI Pin and the public backlash to Friend that AI wearables are a lost cause. After all, it\u2019s been less than four years since the public debut of ChatGPT, the starting gun that launched the AI race. Only a very small handful of tech developers have managed to monetize their proprietary LLMs, which means there are still a lot of unanswered questions around what the next generation of AI-powered products will look like.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some in Silicon Valley, including major players like <\/span>Apple<\/span> and Meta, continue to believe in the practical and commercial potential of AI-powered wearables. But whatever form those new wearables take, they almost certainly won\u2019t be \u201ccompanions,\u201d <\/span>\u00e0 la<\/span><\/i> Friend and Humane. The public verdict on that model has been resoundingly clear.<\/span><\/p>\n

One alternative route that the evolution of AI wearables could take is towards personalized health. Indeed, you can see that evolution is already taking place.<\/span><\/p>\n

The <\/span>Oura Ring 5<\/span>, available for preorder today and starting at $399, comes with a built-in AI assistant called <\/span>Oura Advisor<\/span> (which the company first debuted last year). While most people associate the Oura Ring with sleep tracking, the new smart ring is largely being marketed as a personalized fitness tracker and health coach. Through an integration with the Oura app, users can receive personal health recommendations from the AI assistant as well as human medical professionals.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The launch of the Oura Ring 5 arrives on the heels of Google\u2019s release of the Fitbit Air, which also comes with a personalizable, LLM-powered assistant called Health Coach. (Google acquired Fitbit in 2021 for a reported $2.1 billion.) It also comes with a new, AI-heavy app called Google Health, which <\/span>hasn\u2019t gotten off to the best start<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Other AI-powered wearables geared towards health optimization abound. Some smart headbands, for example, conduct EEG scans while you sleep to measure sleep quality. And Meta\u2019s Ray-Ban smart glasses\u2014probably the most popular (and controversial) AI-centered wearable device on the market right now\u2014come with some health-oriented features, including one that allows you to <\/span>track everything you eat<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chatbot health assistants<\/b><\/h3>\n

Oura and Fitbit have, of course, always been geared towards health and fitness, and it was only a matter of time before they started leaning more heavily into AI, so we shouldn\u2019t be surprised that built-in AI health assistants are becoming a hot new trend in the wearable tech space. At the same time, however, some major AI developers have begun investing more in personalized health features, in direct response to trends surrounding users\u2019 interactions with chatbots.<\/span><\/p>\n

In December, for example, a <\/span>report<\/span> published by Microsoft showed that \u201chealth and fitness\u201d was the third most common category of user prompt fed to Copilot, the company\u2019s flagship AI chatbot (the first and second most common types of queries were \u201ctechnology\u201d and \u201cwork and career,\u201d respectively); Microsoft introduced <\/span>Copilot Health<\/span> in March.<\/span><\/p>\n

Data from OpenAI published in January by <\/span>Axios<\/span><\/i>showed<\/span> that forty million people around the world were using ChatGPT for medical advice; OpenAI debuted <\/span>ChatGPT Health<\/span> and <\/span>ChatGPT for Healthcare<\/span> later that same week.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Risks and opportunities<\/b><\/h3>\n

There are plenty of well-founded concerns that come with using AI as a personalized health coach, whether that\u2019s through a wearable device or a chatbot on your phone. Chief among them is: What\u2019s actually happening to that data? How is it being used by the companies that own the devices, who can monitor it, and to what end? And in the case of chatbots, the risks of hallucination\u2014giving users bogus information as if it were fact\u2014are compounded when conversations center on personal health.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like the other hot-button legal and ethical conundrums posed by AI, it will take time for such questions to be resolved. But the growing interest in personalized health among tech companies signals what\u2019s likely to become a key zone of investment both for the leading AI labs looking to monetize LLMs, and for newer startups with their eye towards getting a head start on the next big tech trend.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, all of those companies will be guided by the lesson of Friend and Humane\u2019s AI Pin: If AI wearables ever go mainstream, it almost certainly won\u2019t be as a \u201ccompanion,\u201d but rather as a much more limited tool, designed for a more specific purpose. For better or worse, plenty of people will still turn to AI for therapy, relationship advice, and yes, even as a balm for loneliness. But most of them don\u2019t want to publicly advertise their personal issues in a conspicuous gadget hanging from their neck.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/app\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Oura-Ring-5-7-1200×675.jpeg”] Within some tech circles not so long ago, there was excitement around the concept of a wearable AI \u201ccompanion\u201d; essentially, a chatbot built into a compact piece of hardware, which users would carry around with them on their person. The idea was marketed as a mix between an ever-present conversation partner, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,53],"class_list":["post-1962333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-gizmodo-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1962333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1962333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1962333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1962333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1962333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1962333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}