Iyo One: Part headphone, part audio computer

Concentration is a virtue at any time.
Author | Tang Yitao
Editor | Jingyu
The renewed popularity of artificial intelligence has given rise to a new wave of hardware innovation.
The most popular AI Pin has encountered unprecedented negative reviews. Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) called it the worst product he's ever reviewed; The Verge editor David Pierce said he wouldn't recommend anyone buy the device.
Its competitor, the Rabbit R1, isn’t much better. The biggest doubt about this AI device is that it is obviously just an app, but Rabbit has built a $200 piece of hardware.
Many people see AI hardware innovation as an opportunity to subvert the smartphone era and devote themselves to trying to complete product definition. However, there is still no conclusion yet on "what is AI hardware in the large model era".
A year ago, Humane released an AI Pin at the TED conference, which caused a sensation.
Now there is another AI device appearing at the TED conference. This is the Iyo One, an AI headset from the company Iyo.

01, Iyo One: Headphones, also an audio computer

In 2021, Insider reported that Google’s “Moon Landing Project” team was developing a revolutionary hearing device. A few months later, the project codenamed "Wolverine" was spun off from Google, and project leader Jason Rugolo founded Iyo.

Iyo raised $21 million in funding, with Alphabet as its first investor. Other investors include Lockheed Martin and SoftBank Vision Fund.

Iyo describes the Iyo One as an “audio computer” rather than a headphone. One reason is that Iyo packs a ton of computer components into a 50-cent-sized metal disc, including a 4nm CPU, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of flash storage, battery, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS.

This company wants to put an iPhone into a pair of wireless headphones

This means that Iyo can be separated from the phone and become an independent device. This is an important difference between it and other headphones with integrated AI functions.

Imagine you are sitting in a noisy restaurant and cannot hear your friend across from you. At this time, when you put on Iyo One, it can reduce the surrounding noise, turn up the voice of your friends, and even provide real-time Spanish translation to communicate seamlessly with the other party.

This is the usage scenario of Iyo One that Rugolo described for the audience at the TED conference. To achieve this effect, Iyo One uses multiple apps such as beamforming, computational auditory scene analysis, machine learning noise reduction, and AI transcription and translation.

However, it is worth noting that this part of the content is not demonstrated in real time, but is presented through a video. In other words, whether Iyo One can really achieve the above functions is currently a question mark.

Iyo One does not have a screen, Iyo has specially designed a set of audio-based interactive interface. Usually when we describe the user interface, we refer to the GUI, through which the user interacts with the computer. Iyo One's input and output rely entirely on natural language. Through voice, users can drive AI to assist in reading and sending emails, messages, phone calls, navigation, and music playback.

Iyo can also be an MR device, but auditory rather than visual. Iyo One can create a virtual scene of a football match or a bustling city street for you from an auditory perspective. Rugolo calls it Mixed Audio Reality.

Battery life is a key point worthy of attention. After all, if it cannot meet all-day use, the usability of wearable devices will be very low. Iyo One comes in WiFi and cellular versions. According to TechCrunch, the Iyo One can last up to 16 hours when paired with a phone. But when used independently in cellular mode, the battery life drops to 1.5 hours.

The price of Iyo One is also worthy of attention. The Wi-Fi version's price of $599 is destined to not be a consumer product for the mass market, and the cellular version is $100 more expensive.

The good news is that Iyo does not charge subscription fees for AI services like AI Pin.

02. The problem of AI hardware

Although no one has completed the product definition of AI hardware, there are at least some guidelines to be followed, such as using smartphones as anchors.

Never in human history has any technology penetrated into human life as deeply as smartphones. From food, clothing, housing and transportation to consumption and production, smartphones have participated in almost every aspect of human society.

If replacing smartphones is the end point of AI hardware, this is obviously not a goal that can be achieved in a short time. From the PC era to the smartphone era, the significant change is that devices are more accessible and have more interactions with the environment (more sensors). Despite this, PCs have not completely disappeared, and heavy work still needs to be done on PCs.

For a long time, AI hardware will coexist with smartphones. At this time, you need to think about: What problems can AI hardware solve that smartphones cannot?

The failure of AI Pin lies in the poor user experience, including heat generation, poor battery life, poor projection display, slow AI feedback, etc. The poor user experience reflects the problem of product definition. AI Pin has innovated product interaction, but it has not simplified the old mobile phone interaction. There is no logic in trying to replace an existing set of interactions with a more cumbersome set of interactions.

This can be used to summarize some characteristics of AI hardware:

It is a lighter device than a mobile phone;
It should be more accessible than a mobile phone and interact more with the environment;
It should solve problems that mobile phones cannot solve , instead of doing the functions that the phone has already done well;

Currently we have no way of knowing how the Iyo One will perform in real life. But judging from the above characteristics, Iyo One is obviously more suitable for the concept of AI hardware than AI Pin.

In fact, there have been some successful cases in the market. For example, OLAUD NOTE, an AI recorder that can be attached to a mobile phone, exceeded US$10 million in sales in April this year. As well as the second-generation smart glasses launched by Meta and Ray-Ban, more than 300,000 pairs were sold in Q4 of 2023 alone.

For AI hardware, being able to replace mobile phones is certainly a success. Rugolo doesn’t have such big ambitions. According to technology media AXIOS, being able to sell tens of thousands of units is already a success for him.

After all, this means that the company’s product solves a problem and someone pays for it.

This article comes from WeChat public account: WeChat public account (ID: null), "This company wants to put an iPhone into a pair of wireless headphones", author: Tang Yitao

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