ChatGPT continues its quest to colonize every tech we have, landing on Wear OS smartwatches with a new third-party app.
The free WearGPT app is available on Play store (opens in a new tab)and is compatible with the best Wear OS watches, including the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 and the Google Pixel Watch.
Like competing apps like Petey for Apple Watch, WearGPT supports voice input, so you can talk to it in a similar way to using voice aids like the Google Assistant. But WearGPT is more of a sidekick to the latter than a true replacement as it cannot be used to control other apps on the watch.
Instead, it is more of an all-knowing AI assistant that will answer your questions well. WearGPT is not exactly ChatGPT on your wrist as it is based on OpenAI’s underlying GPT-3 models, not the chatbot itself. And as always, the usual AI caveats apply – it will be very capable of getting the answers wrong or getting off topic.
Still, it certainly looks like a fun new companion that will help you get a feel for where voice assistants are going – even if Google Assistant and Siri are far from their goal. The advantage of these assistants is that they are chatty, so you can pick their brains out on complex topics instead of making very specific requests.
The creator of WearGPT claims that the app is customizable, allowing you to adjust and fine-tune the parameters so that it answers questions the way you choose. Perhaps the only downside is that the Wear OS app seems to have very questionable font choices that have a distinct hint of Comic Sans.
Analysis: A taste of the voice assistants to come
ChatGPT, or at least the technology behind the AI chatbot, is now widely available in some form on most smartwatches, from the Apple Watch to the more niche Amazfit GTR4.
Right now, these are fun early demos that show the potential of having an AI assistant on your wrist, but it’s little more than that. In fact, TechRadar Fitness editor Matt Evans pointed out that relying on the wrist-based ChatGPT for fitness advice could go very wrong.
AI chatbots like ChatGPT have been trained to deal with vast amounts of information gleaned from books, articles, websites, and even social media – and that puts it at risk for anyone who wants consistently accurate information. After all, you don’t have to look far, especially on the Internet, to find dubious advice on all kinds of topics.
But as long as we treat them as a foretaste of the sci-fi future rather than a full-featured service for the present, apps like WearGPT are a welcome addition to the best smartwatches, especially for those who remember sci-fi watches like Dick Tracy’s Two-way Wrist Radio or Star Trek wrist communicators.