Meta made another major move in the race to own the future of AI wearables, acquiring Limitless AI, a startup best known for its AI-powered pendant that records and transcribes real-time conversations.
Under the deal, the Limitless team will join Meta’s Reality Labs to accelerate the development of AI wearables. Meanwhile, the startup will wind down sales of its $99 device.
To understand the implications of this deal, I spoke with SmarterX and Marketing AI Institute founder and CEO Paul Roetzer on Episode 184 of The Artificial Intelligence Show.
Limitless (formerly Rewind) gained attention with a wearable device designed to augment human memory. The "Limitless Pendant" clips to your shirt and captures audio of your daily life, using AI to generate searchable summaries of your interactions.
The company had backing from heavy hitters, including venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and raised over $33 million.
With the acquisition, Limitless will stop selling devices to new customers and begin to taper back its desktop software. This means existing users are left to navigate revised privacy terms under Meta if they want to keep the AI wearable service.
So, what happens to your most intimate data when the startup you trusted gets bought by a tech giant?
Roetzer says he was not a fan of Limitless and had concerns for the users of their tech: Not just about the viability of the hardware, but the data privacy trade-off early adopters make when they wear an AI recording device.
“Anytime you are willing to be a guinea pig for new AI technology, specifically hardware and devices that are intended to record your life, you need to ponder who gets that data when that company fails,” Roetzer says.
In this case, that data, or at least the talent and technology behind collecting it, is now in the hands of Meta. And as Roetzer points out, users rarely have a say in where their digital lives end up.
“You don't control who acquires these companies or their data when the end comes for them,” he says.
The issue goes beyond just the Limitless user.
AI wearables also capture the voices and conversations of everyone nearby, often without their explicit consent or knowledge.
“You're putting other people's data at risk who, unbeknownst to them, were being recorded,” says Roetzer.
The Limitless acquisition is a reminder that the AI hardware landscape is ever-changing. Startups will sell to tech giants that you might be trying to avoid.
The best defense is caution and awareness.
“Let's all be very conscious of whom we're giving our data to, and whom we're connecting it to,” says Roetzer.