There’s nowhere but up for the AI gadget market to go in 2025, because that market in 2023 and 2024 was, sadly, riddled with junk.
Overly ambitious devices debuted — seemingly pegged to the rapturous response to ChatGPT and other LLMs — but once they got into the hands of consumers, to say they did not please would be an understatement.
There was rabbit r1, an underwhelming orange box that, according to Mashable’s Kimberly Gedeon, was essentially a fidget spinner with a screen, with which the user could… do very little. The Verge’s headline summed it up as “an unfinished, unhelpful AI gadget.” Then came the Humane AI Pin, which YouTube tech reviewer Marques Brownlee described bluntly as “the worst product I’ve ever reviewed.”
So the first movers got attention, but it wasn’t for their utility, and it wasn’t exactly positive. The early AI gadget entrepreneurs have been more like the inventors in …