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For the past week, I’ve been testing the Google Pixel Watch 5. In many ways, it’s a typical, modern smartwatch. In others, it feels like one part of a wearable future that’s increasingly in flux. Everyone I’ve spoken to in wearable tech has roughly the same goal — soon, your tracker of choice will feature a helpful AI coach, “check engine” alerts that preventively flag hard-to-detect health conditions, and personalized health recommendations based on your lived experiences and needs.
That’s certainly what’s being pitched. But so far, it seems like most companies don’t know how exactly we’re going to get there.
AI coaches? Even the best ones are too chatty, fixate on one random detail you shared during setup, and require a ton of hand-holding. “Check engine” alerts can be useful and have been documented as saving lives. They can also spark health anxiety and the regulatory quagmire can be expensive to navigate. Personalized health holds great promise, but requires so much of your private data while also being subject to AI’s myriad shortcomings. Even now, most people think of wearable devices as fancy step trackers.
“Historically, wearables have been very focused on hardcore health enthusiasts,” Rishi Chandra, Google’s vice president of health and home, tells me at a roundtable of tech reporters in New York ahead of Made by Google. Usually, tech companies like to keep mum on future ideas and plans. But recently, Google seems eager to lay out its particular vision.
“There’s a huge market of people who are not thinking about their health every day. Today, wearable penetration is about 30 percent — 70 percent of the population has no notion of wearables,” Chandra adds.
Waraich says Google views “glanceble” interactions as lasting roughly seven seconds.
In other words, wearable tech is still in its early days with a lot of untapped potential. The smartwatch is not the end-all, be-all. The fact that wearables can also capture a vast array of personal data compounds that. That’s one reason why, during last year’s Made by Google event, Chandra and Sandeep Waraich, Google’s senior director of wearables, told me that the future of AI gadgets won’t just be a single device. It’ll be an entire ecosystem of diverse accessories.
Since that chat, I’ve already seen several signs supporting Google’s multi-wearable ecosystem thesis. Multiple companies have pivoted to AI glasses (or as Google calls it, “intelligent eyewear”). But we’ve also seen other wearable form factors start gaining steam. See: the horde of screenless Whoop dupes and smart rings. In the AI sphere, some wearable makers are eschewing the health tracking aspect altogether. Some smart jewelry startups like Vocci, Taya, and Sandbar envision rings and pendants as a way to record and transcribe your thoughts using AI.
These are not proven ideas. That there are so many different approaches is a pretty big indication that the entire industry is in the process of throwing wearable spaghetti at a wall, desperately hoping that something will stick and be the next smartphone. It’s enough to make a senior wearable reviewer excited — because yay! Weird experimental products — and also mad — because no! Weird experimental products that don’t work as advertised! Still, there’s a nugget of truth in this new search for new wearable form factors and use cases.
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