Nothing's screenless AI device: what we know before December

Why did Humane and Rabbit fail?

The category has a rough history. The Humane AI Pin, a screenless pin that projected information onto your palm, went on sale in April 2024 for $699 and got almost uniformly bad reviews. HP bought Humane's assets for $116 million in February 2025 without taking the product, and the AI Pins stopped connecting to servers on 28 February 2025.

The Rabbit R1, an orange $199 box that promised to use apps like Spotify or Uber for you by voice, fared little better. In September 2024, CEO Jesse Lyu admitted that around 5,000 people used it daily out of roughly 100,000 sold, so about 5%. Reviewers made the same complaint about both: a smartphone did most of it, and faster.

What is Nothing doing differently?

Pei's slogan seems aimed at chatbots like ChatGPT, where you type or speak a request and explain the situation again each time. Nothing's device would apparently try to capture context on its own, though the company has said nothing about sensors. "No new screen" suggests it will lean on screens you already own, starting with your phone. That would set it apart from the AI Pin, which tried to replace the smartphone instead of working next to it.

Nothing won't be alone. Bloomberg reported in July that OpenAI's first device, designed with former Apple designer Jony Ive, would be a screenless speaker with a camera, with a reveal possibly this year and a release in 2027. Nothing has a few weeks to show what its gadget does that a phone can't.