Smart bracelets from Pebble and Stream appear to be the AI ​​weapon of choice

In the past few months, I have spent a lot of time talking to my computer. One of the least significant aspects of the LLM revolution has been the dramatic leap in technology of all kinds – even the fastest, most affordable models are getting better at understanding and processing speech. I’ve tried many of these apps, from WisprFlow to Monologue to Spokenly to Handy to many others, and I’ve found them all to be useful ways to quickly compose emails, Slack messages, and more. Sometimes he just gives everything a fixed look and likes to end the message with time (like a sociopath), but he’s also good at it.

But nothing has convinced me of the future of talking to my computer like the show I recently found from Mina Fahmi. Fahmi is the CEO of Sandbarwhat’s going on A wise ring called the River which is expected to be shipped later this year. Sitting in a conference room in Sandbar’s New York City offices, Fahmi gave me a rundown of the device’s features, including the latest: ordering all your devices. He opened a new note in Apple Notes, held the ring to his mouth, pressed the device’s connector with his thumb, and spoke to himself for a few seconds. A moment after he finished, two complete – and well-written – sentences appeared in the note.

The stream itself is just a microphone, a battery, and a Bluetooth connection to your phone. You can explain a lot of AI tools in the same way, since it seems that everyone wants to sell you a way to record your conversations and meetings so that you can take summaries and actions. Companies like Plaud and Pocket and FoCase and Mobvoi and many others are happy to sell you portable recorders – bonuses if it sticks to your phone to record calls.

Fahmi and Sandbar are trying to do something. The Stream is a popular tool, dedicated to recording your voice and not anyone else’s. (Another promising feature of the ring is the whispering method – Fahmi spoke to the thing so quietly I couldn’t hear what he said, and the River still wrote it down perfectly. Or so Fahmi said it did.) Fahmi says that the idea for the device came because he likes to travel a lot and was annoyed to check his phone every time he wanted me to help him.

The Stream ring, therefore, has three functions: starting a conversation with an AI assistant, writing notes, and voice commands. Currently, most of these features are done in the Stream companion app. But it’s not the right long-term solution, nor is it Sandbar’s long-term plan. Ultimately, tools like this need to be integrated with all the other tools you use, so you can chat with any agent you want, write notes directly to your existing software, and tell you in any box anywhere. On this front, Stream is already making impressive progress: At one point in his presentation, Fahmi flashed the new firmware on the ring, connected it to his Mac and his iPhone, and was able to seamlessly order audio from one device to another. He didn’t tell me how it worked, but it worked wonderfully.

I’ve tried a lot of AI tools, and most of them are hard to replace with your smartphone. But our phones are a terrible system. You have to pick up your phone, open it, open an app, create a new note or start a new conversation, click, and write, to get an idea in your head. Voice assistants and AI chatbots make interaction easier, but much of modern life involves typing in text boxes. Nattering away on my laptop is better in the comfort and peace of my home; in a coffee shop, on a train, or even walking down the street, it’s all social problems and technically very difficult. (And honestly, I’m not too keen on anyone talking to their best AI friends in public.) Smart rings could solve that problem: You just bring the ring to your mouth, press a button, and talk. The recording sounds natural, the microphone is close enough to your mouth to hear your voice accurately, and the whole process is less noticeable than shouting into your ears.

A few companies are already working on this type of AI ring. Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky created it Index 01 for the same reason Fahmi built River: He needed a faster way to get ideas, memories, and notes out of his head. There’s also Vocci, a conference-oriented version of the same thing. Over time, we may see existing rings from companies such as Oura and Ultrahuman begin to add more technology. It’s not hard technology! It’s a speaker. All the hard stuff happens elsewhere, on the equipment you have too.

Most of these products are not finished or shipped, but I am very excited about the prospect of talking more with my devices – I strongly believe that there is no better place to put a microphone than my finger. Smart rings don’t try to change or hide your phone – they just let you keep it in your pocket most of the time.