The Device That Never Sleeps
Kevin Abbaszadeh
Technology Editor
There’s a quiet arms race happening right now, and it’s not about who has the fastest chip or the biggest model. It’s about who can build a device you’ll forget you’re wearing: one that listens, watches, and thinks, all day long, without you ever asking it to.
Welcome to the era of the always-on AI device.
At CES 2026 in Las Vegas, Meta doubled down hard on its smart glasses strategy, unveiling a Neural Band wristband that reads your muscle signals and lets you “write” text on any flat surface without a phone or keyboard. Amazon, meanwhile, revealed expanded Alexa+ integrations reaching into Samsung TVs, BMW vehicles, Bosch appliances, and even Oura health rings, essentially threading a single AI voice into every corner of your day. The message from both companies was the same: AI shouldn’t wait to be summoned. It should already be there.
Apple and OpenAI are making similar bets. Reports suggest Apple is in early development of an AI wearable the size of an AirTag, complete with microphones, a speaker, and cameras. OpenAI, meanwhile, confirmed plans for its own AI device… reportedly a collaboration with Jony Ive, the designer behind some of Apple’s most iconic products. Then there’s Hark, a secretive new startup backed by $100 million in personal seed funding. The company says it’s building a system with persistent memory of your life that can listen, see, and interact with the world in real time. Their founder put it bluntly in an internal memo: today’s devices are “fundamentally pre-AI,” and the goal is something closer to the AI assistant from the movie Her directed by Spike Jonze… a system that anticipates, adapts, and genuinely responds to you.
It’s an exciting pitch. But it’s also one the industry has fumbled before. Humane’s AI Pin promised a screenless, always-on assistant — and crashed so badly that the company shut down in early 2025, selling off most of its assets to HP for $116 million. Subway riders in New York famously defaced ads for a similar AI pendant with phrases like “surveillance tool” and “get real friends.” The backlash wasn’t just edgy graffiti — it reflected something real.
When you wear one of these devices, you pull everyone around you into your data stream. An offhand comment, a private moment, a conversation you assumed was just between two people; all of it potentially captured, processed, and stored somewhere. Companies showcasing these products at CES were quick to pivot away from privacy questions, offering canned answers before changing the subject. That’s not a great sign.
New form factors like AI-powered health rings and smartwatches are already normalizing always-on, on-body AI — so in some ways, we’re already further down this road than we realize. The question isn’t really whether these devices will exist. They will. The question is whether the companies building them will earn enough trust to make people actually want to wear them all day.
That’s a harder problem than building the hardware.
Contact Kevin at kevin.abbaszadeh@student.shu.edu