Pioneering AI Wearables: Avi Schiffmann and Tab AI | E1868

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1:18That's 50 % off the normal cost just for telling them we sent you. Check out curotech.com slash twist and get$5 ,000 off. All right, everybody, we have been focused on wearable computing for many years here on This Week in Startups, and it's working, it's getting better, and people are actually getting value from these products. 10 years ago when Fitbit came out, yeah, it counted your steps. It was accurate, plus or minus 50%. But since that time, we had Tom from Aura, you know, the ring. He was on episode 1812 back in September. We had Will from Whoop. People are crazy about that episode 1786 and we recently had dan from rewind ai he's building that ai pendant and of course i've said it over and over again the apple watch was complete trash until i don't know whatever this ultra pro one i have is and that's acceptable so now wearables are here and they're here at a very interesting moment in time and all the components work battery life's gotten better It's cheaper to make these things, but AI is here and chat based interfaces are here.

2:24Voice based computing is actually working. So after a couple of decades of grinding it out on voice recognition, on AI, on wearables, on the sub components of wearables, it's all starting to come together. And we're going to have a very interesting moment like the communicator on Star Trek, where you just press a button and you talk to a computer. And today's guest, Avi Schiffman, has been working on a wearable AI interface called Tab, like the old Diet Soda. And if you haven't seen the demo, pretty great. It went viral on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, back in October. Avi, welcome to the show.

3:03Thank you, Jason. I think there's a lot to talk about. There's a lot to talk about. So let's talk about what you've built. What does the Tab do? Is it in market yet? Are people playing with it? Because you did this viral demo. Just generally tell me, where's the company at? What's the origin story here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've been working on this since about April. So it's been about like seven, eight months, something like that. A lot of what we're trying to do is like, no one has really done much of this before. So things are definitely still in like different stages of development. What I posted on Twitter a few months ago is definitely more of like an assistant type thing.

3:36And I think I've gone a lot deeper since then. I think, you know, you have this primitive of like 15 hours of audio a day now. And you can just feed these into systems that can not only transcribe it, but also do emotional sentiment analysis. And you can start to really build a mental model of who you are through all that data. And I think, again, you could build some kind of assistant where you speak to this and I don't know, obviously book you flights or send emails or whatever that type of shit is. Personally, I don't think anyone is going to be like Apple or OpenAI with some type of like Jarvis productivity AI.

4:07I think that whole industry, I think there's a lot of like low hanging fruit people are grabbing right now. There's a lot of interesting products built in that space, probably some other wearables too. But like, ultimately, I think there's a far more interesting use case that I also don't think encumbrance are going to work on, which is kind of this like what was kind of taboo right now, but I really think is not going to be so taboo going forward, which is just like talking to an AI about things in your life. AI companionship is by far like the biggest winner in AI so far. products like Replica, Character AI, etc.

4:39These things have hundreds of millions of users. Character is raising what, like at 5 billion right now, right? These things are doing really well. I think though, whenever there's a new industry like this, there's always porn and gaming slash entertainment that always leads new technology, right? But something that appeals to more of a mainstream consumer, something that's more useful for the average person. Personally, I don't really need... I don't want an AI girlfriend. I don't really need to do little roleplay with some kind of little AI friend in my day. But some kind of companion that actually understands me because it's with me throughout my day.

5:13It can help me with much more deeper aspects of my life, such as just how am I coming off to other people, a lot of just more deeper emotional support or just helping me understand who I am, act as like a sounding board too. I mean, if you think about what you may be... You become the people you surround yourself, right? You're the average of your five friends, but most people don't surround themselves with the greatest people or they're not always available. They're just kind of like low agency, not that intelligent, can't maintain that much context, not really with them, et cetera. But when you build like a wearable like this, that's literally with you and ingesting all this context of your life and you can talk to it and it can maintain all this context and it's far more intelligent, it can act as like that amazing sounding board, that amazing emotional support, et cetera.

5:58And it's going to be lower taboo. so explain what it does uh and what the hardware profile is here uh the size of it what's in it microphone camera processor or what's not in it and why and then what does it do i've got a simple prototype you can see around my neck right now so it's just kind of well we'll make it smaller over time but it's kind of just like a little little amulet pendant type shape and it has a just a simple microphone on it bluetooth to your iphone your iphone sends it off to the server all in background mode. That's it on the kind of hardware side on your phone, you have like a mobile interface on an application that acts as like, you know, the syncing for the Bluetooth.

6:36And you can also kind of communicate with this companion. I'm trying to like distill the interface down to be as simple as possible. I very much like Pi from Inflections. I've got just like a very clean UI. There's really no other distractions. I'm trying to think about like, how would you actually build the UI of something like her? That's kind of where we're at right now. So when you talk to it, it's just picking up any human voices it hears 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and then transcribing everything and then creating a language model where you can ask it questions about the voices in your life and every conversation you've had.

7:12Yeah. Yeah. I actually think the far more interesting use case or kind of like user interface paradigm that I'm trying to explore right now is how it can be proactive because it's like always listening, how can it like hear something and then take action and just save me time without me having to do anything? I just want to put an app on and make my life easier. So I don't know, for example, maybe we're in a conversation like this, and it ends. And maybe Tab knows that usually after meetings, I like to know maybe my action items, or I'm trying to work on my communication skills recently, and just kind of starts the conversation with me.

7:43I feel like a big issue with chat as a UX right now is that it's so open ended, you don't even know a question to ask in the first place. I'm like, I'm basically building you like, you know, your own personal God, right? But like, you still just don't know what question to ask it. But something that just learns how you use it, what you need right now, it's kind of just like, reading your mind in a sense. Because again, it's building up this mental image of who you are, it understands your daily routines, you know, has an emotional baseline. So it knows when you're kind of spiking, or kind of going off track.

8:11You know, here's maybe a more specific example is like the other day, one of my engineers here, he was on the phone, like with his mom, and his mom suggested, said, Oh, it's your birthday coming up. Go ride a bike around the Golden Gate Park or across the bridge, whatever, things like that. He's like, Okay, thanks, mom. Tab sends him a text and he's like, Got that. That's a great idea. A few days later, it's his birthday. He's near the area. He's mentioning something about like, Oh, it's his birthday, etc. Wondering what he should do, talking about this with a friend. Tab then also sends him a text and is like, Oh, remember, your mom wanted you to go across the Golden Gate Bridge, etc.

8:43And he's like, Oh, yeah. Goes and does that. You don't have to do anything. It just makes your life easier. I think that's if we were in a conversation, you know, over dinner, and you mentioned a book, and I said, Oh, I'll definitely read that. It could then I don't know, the next day say, Hey, here's an action item, you should buy this book or something. Yeah. Maybe I think one thing that's interesting, right, is there's a lot of action items that are presented to you that aren't necessarily like very direct, like, oh, I need to do this. It's more like, oh, maybe, you know, you mentioned you're running low on milk, like at the fridge and you like completely forget about it.

9:13Maybe you're at a grocery store, right? You can have this like location-based reminder that uses that context. Just things like that, passively making your life easier. I think that's what wearables are all about. Not new interaction paradigms like humane, et cetera, is trying to focus on. Right. And so humane obviously is a pin. it's by some apple people uh sam maltman i think backed it or amongst the backers of it um have you played with it yet have you seen it in person and what's your initial uh impression of this new model where it projects it uses ai but it also projects i guess onto your hand so if you think of it like uh maybe a it's a little bit smaller than maybe a pack of cigarettes so if you had a pack of cigarettes or a half a pack of cigarettes clipped to your shirt you can put your hand down, it projects onto it, and then you can kind of interface with it that way or audio.

10:00So have you played with it? What do you think? I have a lot of thoughts on Humane. I haven't personally played with it. But you know, I've been doing I've made similar prototypes of like a pin form factor for what I'm working on. So I have a lot of experience there. One note, I think is kind of interesting, because you mentioned Sam Altman, he actually owns more equity in Humane than both the founders do, which Oh, wow. That's wow. I mean, that's what happens when you raise hundreds of millions of dollars before you get a product in the market, you gotta have some trade-offs there. But so I think to me, the big issues with Humane is that it is not always on, but it is a wearable.

10:31And so for a wearable to actually take consumer hold, it needs to just be not just 10x better, 100x better. Wearables are a really tricky thing to actually get to work. You have to charge it. You have to put it on every day. It has to maintain with your outfits, etc. That's really tricky. So it's not always on. It only lasts about 4 hours. You have to fiddle with these battery packs. I just don't think that is ultimately what wearables are supposed to be. If you think about other wearables, let's say Fitbit, etc. Auras, right? These are not things you interact with. You just put them on and you're passively obtaining context that you feed into just maybe your phone.

11:02It's a much better system. Yeah. Yeah. And again, I think they're trying to go down a little different route by trying to completely replace your phone, build a new thing there. Personally, I'm very interested in also having an LTE module, etc. on this product down the line. I just think to get this into the market and for initial adoption, you need a halfway step, kind of Fitbit for your life before you fully replace your phone. Also, again, no one is going to beat Apple or OpenAI with Jarvis, and that seems to be what direction they're going in. Are you running late on holiday gifts for your customers or employees?

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12:48Go check out all the delicious options at nuts.com slash twist. You'll receive your free gift and free shipping when you spend 125 or more. That's nuts.com slash twist. The obvious next question is privacy. And when is this thing recording? Who is it recording? So what are your thoughts on, you know, people's privacy? Because, you know, right now you could take out your phone and covertly record people. People do that. There are spy pens that do that. But this is an entire category, which, you know, the iPhone has many other uses. And if you had a spy pen on you and people found out, they would be pretty appalled.

13:23So this is a new concept. This is a behavior change. How do you think about it? Right. So, I mean, like, I just don't view tab as a recording device. I would more so view the microphone as like the ear for your personal AI. I don't have access to your transcripts. You don't have access to your transcripts. We're not storing audio or anything like that. I think the great part about LLMs is just, you know, it's just artificial intelligence. To make a product like this work, you need to have some intelligence go and parse all this data. And now it's just that can be done securely because no human needs to be involved.

13:53There was a whole industry of products called life logging. I'm sure you've seen things like the narrative clip, etc. back in the day. And those to me are weird, right? Because you actually have a 12-hour recording of your life. I can't even do anything with that much. But I think you more so just have to look at the incentives, not what I say. I personally am much more interested in making money with this startup by selling you like a monthly subscription to use it rather than selling your user data. I think there's far more money to be made in allowing other people to build off your data and making this kind of like your secure, like personal knowledge base that feeds into companions, allows other applications to be contextually aware about you, things like that, rather than selling your user data and letting you have access to it.

14:33you know so when it's recording um if you and i were co-founders of the startup we got in a blow out argument we said all kinds of reprehensible things to each other it transcribes it puts it into the language model but then it deletes the transcript and there's no audio file ever am i correct there i'm playing around with like more of a rolling window i think for the transcripts i think the big issue people have with a product like this is is worrying about like maybe being subpoenaed maybe if they say something sure um i think that's a big issue i'm definitely trying to think about overall though i think it is it is private and the last major project i worked on before this was like a an online housing platform for ukrainian refugees where i had to deal with like the the user data of like refugees in an active war zone we never had any data leaks that's an absolute priority for me it's an absolute priority for this product as well but again like consumers want their lives to be easier i do think if it provides you enough utility, these things that appear taboo now will become very popular.

15:30Apple, just put a camera and a microphone on your face. You've got Amazon Echoes in all of our houses. This is just where the trend is going. And I think a lot of people in tech look at this and they're like, that's never going to catch on. But then the consumers I talk to and the people, and I present this as like the core problems people have in their lives and how this can make better. That's all they care about. They just want their life to be easier. I think the reason why things like this have not really caught on in the past is just the value just did not exceed the tabooness and the weirdness of having like an always on recording device.

15:56But again, it's like, it's not really recording, you're just kind of feeding data into some model. There will definitely be a lot of new legislation built around this over the next decade. I generally agree. Privacy concerns can go down when value goes up. So you know, having find my iPhone, it's a pretty great feature having Uber and seeing cabs come, you know, to you and knowing the distance, you have to give your location, but you get something. But this is kind of different in this situation where you and I with the co-founders we had this crazy argument and then maybe it becomes litigious or something we all make claims i could ask it in in the current model hey summarize my conversation with jacal and we got in that blowout fight leave the last part out but summarize my last conversation with jacal or give me every time jacal talked about his stock options and summarize it and you'd have a whole history of all the times we talked about our stock options and you and i got in an argument about it i don't know maybe that is in the best interest of the person who got the oral arrangement and the other person denying it.

16:50But it also feels like a road to insane amounts of discovery and litigation. Maybe. I mean, that might just be, think about your iPhone. You have a lot of stuff in your notes, et cetera, that gets used in court cases all the time. I think that there will be a lot of, not just doubt, just all kinds of second order effects, maybe affecting people's relationships, et cetera, with a product like this. Ultimately, though, I feel like that's probably for the best. And again, it's not like anyone's forcing you to wear the product like this. I think if you look at a surveillance state like China, you have no say in that.

17:19You're kind of always being recorded. But in the US, these are ran by private companies. You're not forced to use this product. You don't have to be around other people that use it if you don't want to. Ultimately, though, this is just where we're headed. I think there will be a lot of people that are going, oh, I don't want to work on this, things like that. And then there will be people like me that will work on it. And we will build a future that your family uses. When you use a VHS camera, there's a little red light on the front. People could know that it's recording. So have you considered something like that?

17:46So the pendant lets people know it's recording. And in fact, in public spaces, when you do have cameras, depending on location and geo, you have to let people know you're recording. And I think you also have to let people know you're recording at the workplace as well. So this is a very controversial topic. Cameras at workplaces, microphones at workplaces, you could do it, but I think employees have to be informed. So how do you think about consent and informing people with a device? And again, the device isn't out yet. People aren't using it, you're just beta of testing it on yourself, correct?

18:15Yeah, and just kind of people around me. So I actually have thought a lot about this. I'm definitely subject to change this. But I feel that because a device is always on, it kind of just acts as the indicator itself. I think people just kind of become familiar with this concept. I don't think you necessarily... I think by adding an LED on it, it kind of makes it feel more weird. And I also think the reason why those have it is because you can selectively choose when to record and when not to record. And that makes it be like, oh, when is he doing it? Whereas with a product like this, it is kind of always on.

18:42I think you know with products like Google Glass people always compare things like this to that look I mean the reason why Google Glass never caught on was not even because of the recording issues it was just it was not that useful it's just it was never that useful I'm very bearish anyways wasn't useful though I agree with that yeah yeah but uh anyways one thing I wanted to say was kind of cool tap sent me a text I'm playing around with one aspect of how it can be like maybe supportive or kind of these positive uh affirmations in a way I think a lot of people struggle with just being seen and like feeling this momentum.

19:11It was like, you can see I got a text here. It's like, insightful AI perspectives. I noticed your thoughts on AI companionship and the mainstream appeal of practical AI applications. It's a refreshing perspective that aligns with your vision for tab. Keep pushing the boundaries, Avi. Very simple. But just having this thing of like, I noticed, you know, keep doing this. Great job. I'm playing around with that. Doesn't mean it's going to be in the final product. But like, there's, you know, people want to feel seen. It definitely helps you with your, uh, just kind of just keep things going. Um, I think this is a lot of what like some of my best friends in life have done for me, but they're not always there.

19:42So if you were having a tough day and you got into an argument, it could say afterwards, Hey, that, that sounds like a really tough interaction you had with your coworker. Um, here's some strategies for, you know, maybe coming down from that intensity. You might want to consider, you know, sending them a follow-up note or doing, uh, you know, doing some meditation or whatever. right one one like thing i noticed like it i did an interview like a few weeks ago with the crimson and i talk a lot about like conquering i've literally i literally have a poster of caesar right above this desk of him crossing the rubicon i've got a statue of caesar in my house i could talk about this all the time but i'm also trying to kind of build you like your best friend in a way this like super intelligent sidekick so i i'm having to like market and pitch friendship right then i talk about conquering and so i did this interview and tat sent me a text right after i said something.

20:28And because the interviewer was like, by conquering, do you mean raping and pillaging villages? And I was like, oh, no, no, no, not like that. It's like, look, here's a specific instance of like how this negatively affects your pitch and how these things kind of juxtapose together, friendship and, you know, conquering, these don't really match. You should probably not talk about it that often. So when I pitch to investors, et cetera, I don't hit on the conquering stuff at all anymore. I pitch a lot more friendship. Just a little bit of awareness to things really changes your behavior. Ah, fascinating.

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21:32So here's a very simple call to action for 39 bucks plus state fees. They're going to form your LLC, your corporation, or your nonprofit, and you'll be able to launch your business in just minutes. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com slash twist today. That is northwestregisteredagent.com slash TWIST today. So you saw and you had a little interaction with Dan, the founder of Rewind AI. I had him on. I asked him the same hard questions I'm asking you, but it was kind of interesting. He's recording the desktop and trying to build a similar model, which is like a DVR of your entire desktop, which in some ways would be your entire life.

22:14if we had some good discussions about, hey, well, if signal's on your desktop and the expectation is that's private, are you sucking that? And he's like, yeah, currently we are. Well, we could make that a user setting. And I said, well, maybe that shouldn't be a user setting. You as the creator of this should know that that's used for that purpose and not put it in. Just like an incognito window might be used for having privacy. Why would you record something that the person has explicitly turned on for privacy? But you had an interesting interaction with him. You went viral. And then what happened next?

22:43Yeah, so I posted my demo. The first one I've seen of any kind of always-on AI wearable, the necklace form factor. The next day, I see a whole shitty post from Dan of just kind of like a shitty version that's copying this. And like, I mean, you can tell that he hasn't thought it through that much, even based off your interview with them. Of course, it was very rushed. I'd love to be a fly on the wall on their Slack channel when they posted that. But I mean, personally, I think here's the thing is like, Jason, how much today did you really need to pluck out a detail from an earlier conversation?

23:12it's not really some i think it's maybe cool maybe cool yeah no i haven't i was gonna say i was thinking i was actually thinking about the question i was like no i haven't right perfect memory is a cool primitive that i think feeds into something like a companion that uses that to make your life better and its interactions i think it's more so like it takes all these details and facts that it kind of learns about you from previous conversations and uses that to like answer your questions properly it's just all that context just more constraints to get you a more specific answer later on. I think Perfect Memory is cool.