Why AI wearables are struggling to seek out their place in our lives

I nonetheless bear in mind the primary time I attempted on Google Glass. I used to be 12, and a good friend of my mother and father had simply gotten one—I used to be fully mesmerized. It felt like a glimpse of the longer term.

More than a decade later, that future by no means arrived. Instead, we’re surrounded by a graveyard of intelligent wearables that by no means fairly caught. So what’s really lacking?

Today, a brand new technology of AI-enabled wearables is rising with gadgets that promise to embed intelligence immediately into the objects we supply and put on day-after-day.

And but, most of what we’re seeing nonetheless looks like déjà vu from the early smartwatch period: a mic, a board, and a obscure promise of productivity. The focus is on what the system does, not the way it lives on the earth.

Minimalism Isn’t Enough

Apple’s clear, brushed-aluminum aesthetic dominates tech for a motive. And sure, it even works in wearables. The Apple Watch proved that minimalism can cross over when it’s paired with private expression. It wasn’t only a mini-iPhone in your wrist; it got here with metallic, leather-based, and material straps, Hermès collaborations, and numerous methods to sign id. In different phrases, it labored as a result of it turned a part of folks’s private model, not despite it.

The second you ask somebody to put on one thing, the principles change. It stops being a software and turns into a mirrored image. You’re not simply transport a product, you’re asking somebody to let the world see them otherwise.

The Adoption Equation

The successful AI wearable solves two issues concurrently:

1. Functional utility—making life meaningfully simpler
2. Social acceptance—mixing seamlessly into the world so it stops being a gadget and begins being a part of you

Most gadgets at the moment are designed for tech reviewers and hackathons, not precise folks. They’re clunky, apparent, and pressure customers to justify their presence. Adoption dies the second somebody has to elucidate a tool to everybody round them.

If we take a look at the Oura Ring, it doesn’t simply observe sleep; it matches into folks’s jewelry stacks. It passes the true take a look at: Would you continue to put on it if it ran out of battery? Most devices fail that take a look at. Cultural objects don’t.

Why This Moment Matters

Apple’s September occasion will unveil the iPhone 17, Watch Series 11, and Watch Ultra 3. Early reporting suggests new AI-driven well being options. But as highly effective as these could also be, the shape stays rugged, utilitarian, and unmistakably “tech.” That opens house for brand new entrants to redefine the class—not as devices, however as private objects of that means.

At the identical time, Gen Z is main a wave of hyper-personal model, curating each element of their aesthetic to sign id. Fashion-tech in 2025 is changing into extra human and extra automated, mixing bodily expression with digital layers. If wearables are going to matter, they need to reside at this intersection of tradition and intelligence.

The Missed Opportunity

Marshall McLuhan as soon as wrote that the media and instruments are extensions of ourselves. Glasses prolong our imaginative and prescient. Clothing extends our pores and skin. Cars prolong our legs. In that sense, a very private AI wearable extends reminiscence, consideration, and presence. Invisible AI isn’t about stealth, it’s about mixing into life seamlessly. That’s not an afterthought; that’s the purpose.

AI wearables could possibly be probably the most private shopper tech ever. Devices that know your context, perceive preferences, and anticipate wants in actual time.

Most of at the moment’s gadgets miss that chance. They’re function-first, culture-last. They must exist the place folks already categorical themselves: in clothes, jewelry, glasses, and watches… objects which have that means earlier than they’ve circuitry.

The Real Challenge

For these of us constructing on this house, the purpose isn’t simply higher options or quicker chips. We’re being requested to design one thing that persons are prepared to put on, which suggests it has to replicate who they’re, not simply what the tech can do.

That’s the true take a look at for an AI wearable: would somebody nonetheless put on it even when it ran out of battery?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elena Wagenmans is cofounder and CEO of Tai, the place she leads {hardware} design and engineering. She is a product design and mechanical engineer with expertise transport production-grade shopper {hardware} at Apple.

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