Is This the First Smartwatch with ChatGPT?

Harnessing the power of ChatGPT in a wearable form factor, May Labs built what might be the world's first ChatGPT smartwatch.

If you have an Apple Watch or an Android equivalent, then you already have access to an AI assistant on you wrist. But anyone who has ever asked Siri a complicated question knows that it is seriously lacking. ChatGPT, on the other hand, has made waves recently thanks to its uncanny ability to both recognize natural language and to formulate coherent responses. Siri looks like a mid-aughts chat bot in comparison. Harnessing the power of ChatGPT in a wearable form factor, May Labs built what might be the world's first ChatGPT smartwatch.

ChatGPT is, ostensibly, a chatbot. But that term doesn't really do it justice. It is a very sophisticated machine learning model that incorporates natural language processing (NLP) and reinforcement learning techniques, along with vast training data, to produce well-written and surprisingly cohesive responses to prompts. It can write entire articles (something professional writers like myself find concerning), do homework, and answer questions like Siri does—but better. Most people use ChatGPT through OpenAI's online service, as current offline implementations are experimental. So May Labs needed a way to access OpenAI's ChatGPT service from a wearable.

To simplify this, May Labs decided to just shove an entire computer into the "smartwatch." That is a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B inside a 3D-printed enclosure worn on the user's belt. A battery bank sits in a pouch, also worn on the belt. The user interface, which contains the display, buttons, LEDs, and microphone, is worn on the wrist in a custom 3D-printed housing with two wristbands. The screen is a two-color OLED, and it can show the time/date or the ChatGPT responses.

The Raspberry Pi runs a script that connects to the OpenAI ChatGPT API (Application Programming Interface). The user can press a button to record a question and the Raspberry Pi will pass that along to ChatGPT for parsing. It will then return an answer in both text and audio form. The text appears on the OLED screen and the audio pumps out through a speaker.

This does, however, require an internet connection. When at home, the user can simply connect to their Wi-Fi. But if they're out and about without public Wi-Fi, they'll need to connect to their smartphone through a hotspot. That problem could be solved with a cellular modem, but that would increase the cost substantially.

It isn't sleek or sexy, but this ChatGPT smartwatch does work. It is capable of returning much better answers than virtual assistants like Siri and we can only assume that we'll see consumer smartwatches equipped with ChatGPT in the near future.

Cameron Coward
Writer for Hackster News. Proud husband and dog dad. Maker and serial hobbyist.
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