Kudos to Plaud for one factor: in a 12 months in any other case marred by high-profile failures and oh a lot AI vaporware, it made an AI gadget that does precisely what it claims to do and does it fairly properly. The gadget is named the NotePin, and it’s a $169, pill-shaped voice recorder that may transcribe, summarize, and pull necessary info out of your audio. This is one thing present AI techniques can truly do properly! There’s good and mature tech at each step alongside the pipeline right here, from tiny microphones to speech-to-text transcription to natural-language processing and AI summarization. The NotePin does it properly.
But the rationale the NotePin works can also be the rationale I wouldn’t advocate shopping for one. AI voice recording is nice and helpful and being commoditized at a completely blistering tempo. With iOS 18 or macOS Sequoia, you get transcriptions and summarization constructed into the Voice Memos app. Google’s Pixel Recorder app is terrific and is constructed into each the Pixel telephones and the Pixel Watch. You can even get comparable options from a number of apps. Do you want a devoted voice recorder?
This is, in fact, the everlasting query about AI assistants as a complete. Are they a characteristic of your present units or a gadget class unto themselves? Plaud’s argument for devoted {hardware} is about the identical as all the opposite AI startups: that ease of use is every thing. The NotePin’s equipment are core to its enchantment: there’s a braided lanyard so you may put on it round your neck, a wristband so you may put on it Fitbit-style in your arm, and a clip so you may put it nearly wherever else.
Plaud’s argument for devoted {hardware} is about the identical as all the opposite AI startups: that ease of use is every thing
In my time testing the NotePin, I’ve largely had it round my neck, and I’ve used it to notice reminders whereas driving, ramble lengthy concepts to myself whereas strolling the canine, and summarize calls and conversations. It’s definitely helpful having the ability to simply attain down, press the NotePin till it vibrates to point it’s recording, after which yammer away at nothing whereas my necklace dutifully listens. Once, after I was significantly having fun with a podcast, I simply performed the entire thing on speaker so the NotePin would transcribe and summarize it. The NotePin is less complicated to entry than my cellphone in my pocket, and it’s undoubtedly easier than holding my wrist in entrance of my mouth for minutes at a time whereas shouting into my watch. The type issue undoubtedly issues.
The NotePin’s mic is completely positive: the audio it data by no means sounds wonderful, however in each sensible situation I attempted, it was ok for strong transcription. Plaud estimates the system’s battery lasts for about 18 hours of recording or 30 days of standby time, and in my testing, I’ve executed about 4 hours of recording over about 10 days, and the battery simply hit “Low.” The NotePin costs on a tiny pad, which I’m assured I’m going to lose very quickly, and I want it was only a easy USB-C plug. But look: the factor works. It does what it says on the tin.
The main drawback with the NotePin, and albeit each different AI gadget, is that it’s not helpful sufficient on the opposite aspect. Once you’ve made some recordings with the NotePin, you import them into the Plaud app, which is comparatively fast and easy. But then you need to go into every recording and manually inform the app to transcribe it, decide a “template” you need to use for the way it’s summarized, after which come again a couple of minutes later to see what it got here up with. (You get 300 month-to-month minutes of transcriptions and primary templates without spending a dime, or for $80 a 12 months, you get 1,200 and extra templates and options.) That’s an excessive amount of busy work. Plus, how a lot effort am I actually saving if I’ve to drag out my cellphone — twice! — anyway?
The transcriptions are good, and the summaries are useful, and up to now, I haven’t had any big errors or hallucinations. But as soon as they’re executed, they only reside in reverse-chronological order within the Plaud app. The app appropriately famous that certainly one of my recordings was a reminder to purchase retinol; it didn’t remind me of something. It simply made the title “Reminder to purchase retinol.” When I wandered my kitchen talking a grocery listing into the NotePin, the app precisely transcribed that listing for me however simply titled the notice “Grocery List with Various Food Items and Household Essentials.”
It’s probably not the NotePin’s fault that it could’t do greater than flip my nonsensical ramblings into textual content information. It’s not Plaud’s fault, both. It’s simply that what I actually need — and what ought to actually occur — is for it to take that grocery listing and add it to the grocery listing I have already got on my cellphone. It ought to add that reminder to my to-do listing. At the very least, the app ought to be capable to mix my grocery listing notice with my different grocery listing notice, however it could’t try this, both. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what you’re recording, odds are you need to do one thing with it afterward, and Plaud merely can’t do most of these issues. Eventually, the Plaud app simply started to really feel like one other inbox I wanted to examine.
All that’s the reason your cellphone or smartwatch may be insurmountable foes within the AI assistant wars. They may be marginally much less handy — you need to pull it out of your pocket as a substitute of simply reaching right down to your chest — however they’re much more linked with the remainder of your digital life. Building your complete world round a transcription app simply doesn’t make any sense.
It’s doable, over time, that this stuff might turn into extra open. Apple and Google might open up APIs that enable AI assistants to work together with the opposite apps in your cellphone, or theoretically, the assistants might get sensible sufficient to only work together with the apps in your behalf. Lots of builders are engaged on each choices. But because it stands proper now, the Plauds and Humanes and Rabbits of the world simply can’t do sufficient. AI voice recorders are a terrific thought — however they’re not a brand new sort of gadget.
