Ambi Is A Real-Time Proactive AI For Apple Devices, With Hardware To Come

I’ve tested a fair share of AI-powered note-taking devices in the past year, with some of the best ones making my coverage of tech conferences far easier than before. But while it’s the Memoket wristband or Plaud pin, these devices are reactive devices: I have to actively tell them to begin listening, and then prompt them to give me the result after.

A new AI service launching in beta form this week aims to change that. Named Ambi, it’s a software for Apple devices (iPhone, MacBook, Apple Watch) that aims to be “less like a summarizer and more like an always available live counsel.”

What this means, according to Ambi co-founder Peter Mo, is that Ambi “moves beyond AI that simply waits for a prompt,” instead Ambi uses “real-time reasoning and can take action before the user even thinks to ask.”

Ambi supposedly builds context by observing and recapping relevant conversations and activities across supported platforms and devices, which currently includes the iPhone, MacBook and Apple Watch. But Ambi is working on a dedicated hardware coming next year that the user can wear. While Ambi has not announced what type of hardware it is, we can tell from the teaser image, and the fact that a former Google wearable product manager has joined Ambi as “head of product,” I suspect it will be a wristworn wearable.

Of course, AI devices that can listen to conversations is a controversial topic right now, and Ambi promises their software does not store audio by default, and that the user can turn off recording at any time.

I’ve been testing a beta version of the app on my iPhone, and even in its early stages, I can see Ambi’s potential. For first demo I played a YouTube clip of a documentary about K-pop singer Lisa’s crafting her solo album. In the video, she spoke in Korean, while American producers spoke in English. Ambi was able to listen, provide a transcript in real-time of both languages, and also show me an active analysis of the conversation.