Both Amazon and Google's "hockey pucks" (speakers) are like $50, and both come with a lifetime of free AI ... although the Google one sucks and almost requires a Gemini subscription (and, sadly, speaking as someone who has been testing both recently, that paid Gemini subscription remains noticeably inferior to the free AI Alexa offers).

The only way anyone sane would purchase a $400 speaker is if it came with a lifetime (or at least several year) subscription to Open AI.

Even then, if that's all you get for your $400 (a speaker worth $50, if that, and a few years of Open AI) it still sounds like a terrible product destined to fail! But if they think they can get away with selling anything less than that for $400, then this is truly DOA.

> Sources told Gurman that the product would have a ring-shaped design about the size of a hockey puck. The form factor is meant to be battery-powered and portable, so a user could easily carry it around with them.

If there is any company I would hope people weren’t carrying a microphone around for, it would be OpenAI.

Smart speakers are a mature market and seem to have topped out at about 1/3rd of US households at a lower price point than this. This is going to be a very hard sell.

Since the donut is already leaning "entertainment", make it bipedal and I'm sold!