The hard part about naming this year’s biggest losers in the tech industry is that it feels like we’re all losers again in 2024. In the depressing spiral that is social media, in the do-it-or-don’t dance of banning TikTok in the US, in the never-ending stream of edited and deepfaked content that makes everyone question what’s real, the world is Lost. And it’s lost.
But this year, some areas stood out as particularly problematic. Specifically, AI and dedicated AI gadgets have proliferated more than ever before, extending not only to digital assistants and search engines but also to wearables. Also, Intel’s position deteriorated even further, and it said goodbye to the robot maker as well as the Lightning cable. But I’m pretty happy with the last thing.
Our annual roundup of the worst technology developments is shorter than usual, but that might be because we’re all exhausted. And because most of the bad stuff can be attributed to AI, social media, and misinformation. Still, we take this nightmarish trip down memory lane and hope to avoid similar pitfalls in the future.
Introducing generative AI into every crevice
2024 was the year when consumer AI tools became increasingly impossible to ignore. That’s thanks to tech giants Google, Meta, and finally Apple building AI tools into some of the most used software on the planet. And in this effort to popularize AI, I can’t help but pause. Who on earth is asking for this, and is anyone actually using AI?
Over the past few months, I’ve been testing Samsung Chromebooks with various AI tools built in, as well as various Apple Intelligence features rolling out over the fall. It all came to a head in one of Engadget’s Slack channels in early December, shortly after Apple launched its Generated Emoji and Image Playground features. It’s so easy to spit out AI-generated images into Image Playground that Genmoji feels like a logical next step after Apple introduced personalized Memoji in 2018. But the result overall felt uninspired, unpleasant, and perhaps worst of all. Above all, it’s extremely lame.
I take a lot of photos with my iPhone, so I have a ton of images in my Photos app categorized by my name (which if I let it were, I’d end up grouping similar faces together for years). With hundreds of images to choose from, Image Playground should have no problem creating a convincing replica of me playing guitar on the moon. Well, yes and no.
This image, and the images created by my colleagues Charlyn Lowe, Valentina Palladino, and Sam Rutherford, suggest that the AI-generated cartoon I was watching was at least inspired by these people. There are some facial features that make you feel. . But they all gave off some serious uncanny valley vibes. These results aren’t the cute digital cartoons that everyone was creating with Bitmoji back in the day, but rather unappealing, soulless representations with dismembered fingers.
On a completely different note, I just had a chance to try out Google’s “Help Reading” summary feature on a 250-page government report. I knew I didn’t have time to read the entire documentation, but I was curious to see what the AI could do here. As it turns out, there aren’t that many. The summary was so concise that it tried to parse 250 pages into about 100 words, so it was essentially meaningless, not unreasonable. I tried this trick on a recent review I was writing, and it helped me better capture the main points of the article and answer subsequent questions accurately. But given that the final product was probably 4 pages long, my impression is that the AI probably does a decent job of summarizing what most people can read on their own in less than 5 minutes. That’s what it means. If there’s something more complicated, forget it.
I could go on, but my colleagues and I had a good laugh watching a summary of the ridiculous notifications we receive from Apple Intelligence, and I think I’ve gotten my point across. We are in the middle of an AI arms race, and large companies are developing these products long before they are ready for prime time or even have a working product. We are committed to staying ahead of the curve with our products. And for what purpose? I don’t think any AI company is meaningfully answering consumer needs or finding ways to make people’s lives better and easier. They’re announcing things like this because AI is the buzzword of the decade and ignoring it would be disappointing shareholders. — Nathan Ingraham, Associate Editor
Photo by: Cherlynn Low/Engadget
Humane AI Pin and other AI gadgets
We haven’t seen a more hyped device this year than the Humane AI Pin and Rabbit R1. And no other device was as disappointing. Both Humane and Rabbit say people are ready to give up their phones for something smarter and more personal, but neither device is actually better or more useful. he insisted.
Of these two companies, Humane was arguably the biggest loser in 2024. The company had the ignominious honor of reaching negative net sales as former buyers began returning AI pins faster than new units were sold. I’d like to say the problem ended there, but it didn’t. Humane announced a formal recall in October after initially warning customers that the AI Pin charging case was a fire hazard. In the preceding months, the company reportedly tried to find a buyer without success.
Rabbits have certainly faced their own set of challenges. After being slammed by critics in May, a hacker group announced in June that R1 had a huge security hole. In July, it was discovered that user chats with R1 were being recorded without a deletion option.
Last I checked, Humane has since pivoted to developing an operating system that other companies might want to add to their devices, but here’s the thing. A big part of what made AI Pin so malicious in the first place was bad software. You’ll have to give the company points to try, but at this point I’d be surprised if Humane is still in business by this time next year. — Igor Bonifašić, Senior Reporter
Overview of Google Search and AI
This observation has been prevalent all year round, but when you compare Google from 10 years ago to Google today, the difference is striking. With the introduction of AI Overview this year, it feels like Google has finally made search results completely impossible to use without scrolling. Forget about sponsored results, newsboxes, discovery panels, and all the various modules that take up the top half of the results page for a given query. In 2024, Google decided to add yet another section on top of everything, pushing the actual listing of websites even further down.
Since it was first released in the US in March, AI Overview has been telling people it’s okay to put glue on pizza or eat rocks. Despite AI’s general tendency to get facts wrong, Google continues to expand this feature to more countries, acknowledging that summaries may be “weird, inaccurate, or unhelpful.” Ta.
Not only that, but they have also started adding advertisements to the overview. This means that not only will unreliable AI-generated results appear at the top, but you’ll be able to pay to promote anything you want to advertise in that valuable space. Considering the fact that the actual result boxes and rankings are all subject to SEO games by websites doing everything possible to gain higher positions in the list, Google’s search results are basically You can see that there is a fee. point. This will continue to generate billions of dollars in revenue for the company, but will make it even more difficult for discerning users to actually find good, high-quality results.
Things get even worse when you consider Google’s search engine priorities on iPhone and Android devices. This year, the U.S. government declared Google a search monopoly and announced that the company pays companies like Apple, Samsung, and Mozilla billions of dollars a year to be the default search engine on devices and browsers. Then there’s Chrome, the world’s most popular browser, which has a questionable history of tracking users in incognito mode. Can you trust the information you see in a Google search anymore?
With the rise of alternatives like DuckDuckGo, search engine Kagi, which you pay $10 a month to use, and OpenAI’s SearchGPT, which launched this year, people are starting to stop using Google Search altogether. But I’m not sure the majority of users will switch to these options, especially since one of them is expensive and the other requires more AI. I understand that it is difficult to create a product that meets the needs of users while also satisfying shareholders. I wish Google (or any major company, really) could re-prioritize and bring back a search engine that just connects people to the best the internet has to offer. — Charlyn Lowe, Deputy Editor
intel
The road to every great tragedy is paved by people who make the most selfish decisions at the worst times. This brings us to the story of Intel, which used up its last chance to avoid becoming a business school failure story.
Earlier this month, the company fired Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger midway through an ambitious plan to save the chip giant from its own worst instincts. Mr. Gelsinger is an engineer who was brought in to fix a culture that is too biased against people in the financial industry, who don’t know what will happen next quarter.
Sadly, this came as a surprise to Intel’s board, even though they had told everyone that fixing 20 years of corporate mess would be time consuming and expensive. Gelsinger was probably left out because he was trying to take a long-term view on how to restore the storied manufacturer’s success.
Perhaps some cursed MBA type will go down that path and whip the company’s foundry department, knee-deep in the design team in the process. It will take more than a decade for Intel to really realize the consequences of ignoring Gelsinger’s Cassandra-like warnings. But if TSMC reigns alone and we all start paying more for chips, it would be easy to point to this moment and say this is Intel’s last chance to pull itself out of its slide. — Daniel Cooper, Senior Editor
Photo by: Cherlynn Low/Engadget
Apple’s Lightning Connector Fan
We knew the writing was on the wall when the iPhone 15 debuted with USB-C in 2023, but this year Lightning’s battered corpse was laid to rest in its grave. The Apple-specific connector was a surprise when it debuted with the iPhone 5 in 2012, replacing the giant 30-pin connector of the iPod era. Unlike the then-dominant micro USB ports that dominated Android phones and other small devices in the early 2010s, Lightning was thinner, which was important, but it was also reversible so there was no wrong way to connect it. .
It eventually made its way to a wide range of devices in the Apple world, including AirPods, iPads, Mac accessories, and even a Beats product or two. But even Apple has relented and introduced new products to similarly sized (and similarly reversible) USB- I started switching to C. Challenging devices like AirPods Max and Mac input devices will also be converted to USB-C in 2024, leaving only a handful of legacy Lightning devices (iPhone SE, iPhone 14, and the old Apple Pencil) on Apple’s virtual shelf. You can be sure that everything will be included. It will probably be gone by this time next year. That’s fine. Lightning served us well, but its time has passed. Everyone praises our universal Type-C overlord.
So while Lightning’s death is a complete victory for the future of cross-device charging worldwide, it’s understandable that anyone whose home still has a grove of Lightning charging stations that it will soon replace will feel nostalgic. . In the meantime. — John Falcone, Editor-in-Chief
Moxie the robot dies
When I wrote about Embodied’s children’s robot, Moxie, I was captivated by its adorable design and chatty demeanor. It was intended to serve as a companion for children, something that would help them read books or simply have conversations. I wasn’t really attracted to the $1,499-$1,699 price tag and the eventual $60 monthly subscription requirement. Moxie officially ceased to exist when Embodied announced it was ceasing operations due to “financial difficulties” following a failed funding round.
While the death of domestic robots isn’t an entirely new phenomenon (remember Jibo?), Moxie’s death feels particularly tragic. Because Moxie was a device primarily intended to help children. Imagine having to tell your child that your robot friend has had to quit his job due to “financial difficulties.” Embodied said it will provide age-appropriate guidance for customers to discuss closures, but no matter how you talk about it, it will be a tough (and likely traumatic) conversation for young people. However, it may be good to know early on that all your smart devices will be disabled. (But not our pets; they are immortal.) — Devindra Hardawar, Senior Editor
