One of the biggest concerns about AI is how lazy it appears to be making us. If my children don’t know an answer to a question, then they tell me to “search it up”. They’re mortified if I ask them to find the answer in a book or wait till they can next speak to their teacher.
I get the temptation. Why bother waiting or putting in the hard work when you can summon ChatGPT or Alexa to give you an AI-powered answer?
Smart speakers, chatbots and AI are affecting the way our brains interact with the world. YouTube is another example. Despite YouTube getting tough on AI slop, the reality is that the video-sharing platform is awash with AI-generated content that is largely devoid of human creativity.
TikTok, Instagram and X are the same. I ask the genuine question: do we need our brains any more?
Okay, enough of the existential ramblings. What does all this have to do with the Looki L1 AI camera?
I never thought I'd wear an AI camera round my neck
Well, the Looki L1 is “the world’s first multimodal personal AI wearable that sees, hears and understands your life.” It takes visual and audio input and processes it to provide personalized help, advice and curated content based on your context, emotions and experiences.
The company describes it as a “smart memory filter and a life advisor" and, if I’m honest, I feel like it’s vying for the position that my brain currently holds.
Despite my AI pessimism, you might be surprised to know that I’ve actually spent the past week wearing the camera. I’ve worn it at home, at the shops, at work, in the car, while cycling and when having coffee. I doubt I’ll use it long-term, but I wanted to give it a chance to convince me of its benefits.
The first few days with the Looki L1 took a bit of getting used to. Who, after all, walks around with a camera strapped to their chest? Not me.
The closest match I can think of is a cyclist who wears an action camera or a driver who has a dashcam, but both of these are for incident monitoring, and neither is attached to an AI engine that is processing the data.
The Looki AI has been designed to try to overcome this awkwardness. It has a fun feet and ears visual aesthetic with cute glowing lights, but these are not enough to humanize the unit.
At the end of the day, it’s still very much just a camera that is almost continuously recording the people and events directly in front of you. I therefore never got used to wearing it – and I don’t think my family or friends did, either.
A camera that isn't going to rock anyone's world
Those concerns aside, what about its camera capabilities? Well, in short, it’s not going to win any awards for its image quality.
The footage lacks clarity and detail, and pretty much every video I captured was seriously grainy. And not the nice sort of film grain that is the holy grail for a lot of cinematographers.
The resolution for video is FullHD, while photos are captured at 4K. The aperture is set at f/2.2 and the field of view is 109° (16mm equivalent). There’s also Electronic Image Stabilization built in.
It’s not bad on paper, but it doesn’t deliver great results. And if you were thinking it could be a good POV camera for your lifestyle vlogs, then think again.
That said, this isn’t designed to be a quality camera; you’ve got your mobile phone for that. Instead, the clips are captured primarily as a record and to contribute towards the AI system’s knowledge base so that it can become as effective a life advisor as possible.
Proactive and reactive AI
With enough clips over a number of days, Looki starts to understand you better and begins to surface insights over time.
For example, if it sees that you’re on your third coffee of the day, then it lets you know that more coffees might affect your sleep. Or if you finish a 5km run, it’ll tell you that you should stretch within 10 minutes because recovery matters.
As well as proactive AI, Looki L1 is also capable of reactive AI. This is where you can search your past moments by asking natural questions. For example, you can ask it whether you had a healthy diet today or if it thinks you’ve been more patient recently.
There are AI apps like Purpose that can answer the same types of questions, but they require you to tell them – in writing – how you feel. Looki L1 is different in that it is constantly capturing the necessary video footage to build up your profile without you even realizing.
Where does that leave us?
This obviously raises ethical considerations, but I’ll get to that another day. I’m more concerned, here, about whether using the Looki L1 makes such a significant tangible difference that it’s worth jettisoning a little resistance in day-to-day life.
I appreciate that you could accuse me of being a technophobe but, considering much of my education and subsequent work has been built on technology, it'll be hard to back up the claim. Don’t we have to draw the line somewhere?
There’s no denying that my days flowed a little smoother when I was using the device, but I don’t like the idea of handing so much access and control of my life to a device and a company that I don’t really know too much about.
I remember feeling the same about smart camera glasses, and we seem to have adopted those without too much concern. Maybe a personalized AI assistant hanging around our necks isn't as weird as I think?
You may also like…
Browse the best photo editing software or the best computer mouse for photo editing.
