Humane, which made its name in the technology world with AI Pin, made a strategic change and started to focus on the software field after this device did not receive the expected attention in the market. The company published a video showing how CosmOS, which it describes as “an artificial intelligence operating system built for the universe of connected devices,” can work on different devices. However, it is stated that most of what is shown in this demo are “representative experiences” and do not fully reflect real usage scenarios.
In the video, it is seen that a user talks to CosmOS while in the vehicle, gets takeaway restaurant recommendations, asks when guests will arrive and adjusts the thermostat of the house. When he returns home, he asks an unidentified smart speaker for directions and learns the goal statistics of a football player from his smart TV. The user said, “I don’t need to specify the actor; CosmOS responds using the context of the content on the screen.” He makes a statement as follows.
Next, the same person tells CosmOS on his phone to read an email and tell it if there’s anything to follow up on. After a few interactions, the AI finds a suitable time in the user’s calendar and schedules an appointment.
Humane notes that CosmOS is device and large language models (LLM) agnostic, meaning it can run on cars, mobile devices, PCs, wearables and more. As the company moves closer to making its SDK public, developers and businesses will be able to easily integrate their own agents, data, and services into CosmOS, bringing greater benefits to a variety of devices and platforms.
However, Humane’s push to offer its operating system as an AI option for third-party devices comes amid fierce competition. Although it has some useful features, such as providing context for follow-up questions, this is among the most basic expectations for any AI assistant in 2024. In this case, it seems more likely that companies that produce the devices that Humane targets, such as cars, televisions, and phones, will consider OpenAI, Gemini, or other more reliable options as artificial intelligence assistants.
The failure of Humane’s AI Pin device to achieve the expected success in the market and the subsequent lowering of its price caused the company to look for new business areas. In this context, the strategy of offering CosmOS as software that can be integrated into other devices is considered a critical step for the future of the company. However, the fact that the experiences in the promotional video are largely simulated and the uncertainty of real usage scenarios raise questions about the effectiveness of CosmOS.
Humane’s effort to gain a foothold in the artificial intelligence software market with CosmOS seems to be a difficult process due to strong competitors and uncertainties about the effectiveness of the software. The company’s ability to prove the real-world performance of CosmOS and establish trusted partnerships will be among the determining factors for the success of this new strategy.