A Category-Defying AI Device

Welcome to Razorfish Radar, a newsletter about life on the internet brought to you from the pioneers of digital innovation for marketing change makers. Radar delivers the latest news on cultural trends, technology, and platforms—along with the expert insights to help you make sense of it all.

After teasing their product for?the majority of this year , tech company?Humane launched its AI Pin last week, part of the company’s vision of a world beyond smartphones and apps through a more intuitive black box pinned to one’s lapel. The AI Pin—marketed at $699 with a $24 monthly subscription fee—uses T-Mobile networks and includes AI models?from OpenAI and Microsoft . The device interface?features ?a “trust” button (signaling when it’s been activated), voice- and gesture-activated commands, and green lasers that project onto your hand like a screen. Orders begin next week, with pins expected to ship in 2024.??

In related hardware updates, NVIDIA?has announced ?the release of H200 chips, an incremental improvement ?on the GPUs that helped OpenAI develop GPT-4. The announcement coincides with conversations about?Sam Altman’s aspirations for artificial general intelligence , which could be released?in the form of GPT-5 ?in the future.

The wearables space continues to evolve, but the true extent of its impact will likely only be made apparent through consumer adoption of alternatives to their smartphones. For what it’s worth, in advance of arguably the most important day in retail, Black Friday deals are highlighting Meta’s Quest 3 as a top gifting option for the 2023 holiday season.

Why it matters: All signs are pointing to an XR future. And as these interconnected technologies— including, yes, Apple’s upcoming Vision Pro —allow consumers to engage in novel experiences that seamlessly coalesce digital and physical realities together, brands that are investing in exploratory experiments will be able to evolve apace. And those that are not experimenting risk being left in the dust.

Other news and trends

Deepfake bounties.?The development of increasingly powerful GenAI platforms is continuing to create horrific risks for people’s personal lives. Yesterday,?404media scooped ?that online marketplace?Andreessen Horowitz–backed Civitai ?now allows users to request “bounties,” or?peer-to-peer requests. for nonconsensual deepfakes ?of other people.?

Platform updates on Meta.?Instagram is?building on the success of Close Friends ?(which is particularly popular with younger audiences;?71% of teens ?selectively share content, 46% do so frequently ), expanding the shareability of content within users’ private lists of people.?In addition to Stories,?users will be able to share posts and Reels ?with smaller audiences. The change, which could?further “silence” public feeds , is one of several updates across Meta platforms that offer more customizable ?and privacy-forward posting options, like the new ability to prevent one’s Threads?content from being cross-promoted ?on Instagram or Facebook.?

Last week at the CMAs: “Fast Car.”?The song of the year isn’t from this year at all, after Luke Combs?took home the award ?for his cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.” Combs?accepted the award ?with a written statement from Chapman, who wrote the?Top 10 hit in 1988 . Social media sampling surely helped the cover’s chart performance: On TikTok, Combs has been sampled?in more than 200k videos ; Chapman’s original has only been sampled?in approximately 60k .

Trending: Blue bubble culture.?Trends about “peeling oranges for the first time” have people performatively sobbing in reaction to a (clearly fake)?text exchange between two exes . The?original TikTok video ?has spawned Internet discourse about the nature of attachment (#orangepeeltheory – 7.2M views; the “interlinked” sound featured has been used?in 98.5k videos ). At the end of the conversation, one person writes “I peeled my orange today” in a green, rather than blue, text bubble, implying that their ex has blocked them. The “heartbreaking” implication fits into a broader conversation about “the blue bubble divide ” when it comes to?texting across OEMs .?

Contributors: Head of Social Content and Engagement Strategy Cristina Lawrence , Senior Vice President Jerry Lawrence , Group Vice President Andrew McKernan , and Senior Vice President Tammy Pepito .

At Razorfish, we help brands define their higher purpose—the emotional reason why they belong in people’s lives. Ready to find your purpose? Learn more here .

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