Have you ever regretted you forgot something you'd heard? Or ever wanted to recall that funny story your friend told you but you couldn't? Well, no such struggles will ever face you again. The times of AI seeping into our everyday lives aren't the future anymore; such cases are becoming more and more ordinary by the day.
One of the tools that bring it closer is Rewind Pendant, an AI-powered pendant that captures everything you hear or say in real life.
What is Rewind Pendant?
Rewind Pendant is a new product developed by the team that made the Rewind software that can capture everything you search on the net, say, or hear, making "AI-generated notes of your entire day." It runs in the background, capturing your screen and audio. Then, it compresses, transcribes, encrypts, and stores your data locally so only you have access.
The Pendant is not software; it's literally, well, a pendant that you wear on your neck so it can capture everything that's around you.
How Rewind Pendant works & how much it costs
You simply put it on, and it records things to let you actually rewind everything you hear or say later.
"Rewind Pendant is a wearable that captures what you say and hear in the real world and then transcribes, encrypts, and stores it entirely locally on your phone. We take a privacy-first approach and offer features for you to ensure no one is recorded without their consent." the product page reads.
The product isn't yet released, but you can sign up for the early access on the official website.
Use cases? It can be useful if you, say, forget what someone just asked you or if you need to share a long call summary with your colleagues. The applications where the tool might be applied are numerous, and the devs limit them only to harmless work-life routines.
What else can be done by Pendant is automatic to-do list generation whenever you verbally commit to doing something to someone else, or it can write down ideas that suddenly come to you (if you talk to yourself, of course).
The team can't commit to a delivery date at this time, as Rewind Pendant is only available for preorder.
As for the tool pricing, the devs say they don't know yet for sure, but their "best guess is $59."
Privacy concerns that Rewind Pendant brings up
When you know that someone is wearing a recording tool, it's only natural to be concerned whether this tool is being used against you and if you're being recorded.
Pendant addresses this, saying, "Only store recordings of the user and anyone else who has verbally opted in. Using voice fingerprints and speaker diarization it’s possible to tell who said what. If a person hasn’t previously said, 'Sure, you can record me' then don’t store anything they say and it is as if they never said a thing.
Only store text summaries of what was said, not verbatim transcripts & recordings. Summaries are basically what a fantastic note taker would have written down manually, but in this case, it is done for you automatically."
According to Rewind, all recordings are stored locally on the smartphone, which is presumably paired via Bluetooth, so the company can't access it either. Optionally, you can also synchronize your own data between multiple devices via an end-to-end encrypted cloud.
All this sounds like the developers rely on the users' decency and don't have any actual preventions of people being recorded without their consent. So, there's no guarantee the tool won't be abused and exploited for less harmless purposes than phone call summaries.
The Rewind Pendant isn't the first gadget created to record and save everyday moments. Earlier endeavors, such as Google Clips, also faced criticism and couldn't succeed in the market. These previous instances highlight the importance of finding the right balance between usefulness and privacy in technological innovations.
