Jay Peters for The Verge: HP Is Buying Humane and Shutting Down the AI Pin

Humane is selling “key AI capabilities” to HP for $116 million and will stop selling AI Pin, the company announced today.

AI Pins that have already been purchased will continue to function normally until 3PM ET on February 28th, Humane says in a support document. After that date, Pins will “no longer connect to Humane’s servers.” As a result, AI Pin features will “no longer include calling, messaging, AI queries / responses, or cloud access.” Humane is also encouraging users to download any pictures, videos, and notes stored on their Pins before they are permanently deleted at that shutdown time.

It seems hard to believe, but the Humane AI Pin launched just 10 months ago, cost $700, and would turn into a piece of trash if you stopped paying the $24/month fee for it. It was widely panned, some people bought it, and now the founders will get a massive payday and the people who bought it get that piece of trash that the Pin was always destined to become. I guess if you bought one for Christmas as a joke gift, you can get a refund, though.

The only decent thing I can think of is that anyone who bought one of these is probably doing quite well and hasn’t used their Pin in months, so their lives will likely go unchanged.