Are AI wearables becoming too curious? The world's biggest tech show seems to think so

There’s always a point at CES when you realise the show has a theme. Sometimes (often) it’s televisions. Sometimes it’s fitness trackers. This year, though, the pattern emerged in a way that felt subtle at first, then impossible to ignore.

Suddenly, wearable tech wasn’t just counting steps, measuring heart rate or nudging you to stand up. Instead, device after device promised to record, interpret and organise the world around you, turning everyday life into searchable memories.

Look at the releases and the news coming out from the biggest tech show in the world, and it becomes clear that AI wearables are evolving into something more like “second brains”. And they’re getting very good at listening.

The quiet hum of machines that remember

SwitchBot, otherwise known for its household robots, arrived with something that almost looked innocent. It's called AI MindClip, a tiny clip-on device that sits on your collar or shirt.

It’s small, discreet, and unthreatening, which makes its purpose all the more striking. It listens. All day.

Speech is captured, transcribed, summarised and stored so you can search conversations later and extract to-dos, reminders and notes you didn’t consciously write down.

Missed a detail in a meeting? Forgot what someone said ten minutes ago? The AI promises to have your back.

There is also Looki’s L1, a different spin on the same idea. It combines audio with other contextual cues, pitched as something for creators, travellers and people bouncing between environments who want their experiences automatically captured and turned into useful outputs.

Suddenly, the focus shifts from tracking your health to something more akin to "live your life, and we’ll remember it for you."

A strange new frontier of convenience

The two devices mentioned above aren't the only ones launched at the show.

Devices such as the Plaud NotePin S (links to Plaud) can transcribe in 100+ languages, highlight important moments, and generate summaries automatically.

Others, like Vocci's smart ring (links to Vocci), let you record up to eight hours of audio in an even more discreet form factor.

(Vocci's wearable reminds me of the Wizpr Ring, which I reported on over a year and a half ago and haven't heard from ever since. All too often, new tech doesn't make it to mass production for various reasons.)

The new devices promise to reduce friction, eliminate note-taking, capture fleeting ideas and surface insights you didn’t think to ask for. And there are plenty of everyday situations where the pitch makes sense.

Long interviews. Busy conferences. Complex meetings. Parents juggling conversations while doing three other things at once. Anyone who has ever said, “I wish I’d written that down”, immediately understands the appeal.

What’s fascinating is how quickly this feels like the logical progression of wearables.

Fitness trackers helped us understand our bodies. Smartwatches helped us manage notifications. Now, AI wearables want to handle cognition itself, including memory, recall, and even the organisation of thoughts.

Notes from the margins

One of the most intriguing parts of this shift isn’t the hardware, but the social layer.

Devices that constantly listen to us are, by definition, devices that constantly listen to other people, too. Friends. Colleagues. Strangers standing next to you in a queue. Not everyone will be comfortable with that, and not every situation is appropriate.

Some brands are leaning hard into privacy controls, on-device processing and features that make recording more obvious. Others are experimenting with different trigger mechanisms and visual cues.

One brand belonging to the latter group is Pebble. Instead of having an always-on microphone, the company's recently announced Index 01 Ring only listens when you press the button on the ring, making it feel less intrusive.

Placed next to all the new “life-logging” devices on the CES floor, Pebble’s approach felt almost radical in its restraint.

The future arrives – sideways

If this year’s crop of AI wearables signals anything, it’s that the battle for your attention is slowly being replaced by a battle for your memory.

Tech companies clearly believe the next big opportunity isn’t just counting what you do, but remembering it, interpreting it and feeding it back to you in smarter ways.

There’s enormous promise here. People with demanding jobs, neurodiverse users, creatives, journalists, and medical professionals can all genuinely benefit from tools that reduce cognitive load and handle the admin of daily life.

However, there’s also caution. How much should be recorded? Who controls that data? What happens when a device becomes so easy to forget you’re wearing it that other people forget, too?

For now, the biggest tech show in the world has made one thing obvious: wearables are no longer satisfied with measuring your body. They want to live alongside your thoughts, conversations and context.

And the most interesting question may not be what these gadgets can do, but how comfortable we’ll be once they do it. If I were you, I would think twice about what I say in public going forward. You never know which ring/pendant/watch nearby is listening to everything you say (probably all of them).