Microsoft patents a weird AI-powered backpack stuffed with sensors

What on this planet.

Backpack, backpack

It appears like Microsoft is trying to take wearable expertise to the subsequent stage with a patent for a full-sensor, AI-powered backpack that may have the ability to spy on you.

It was first marked by MSPowerUser The weblog, The Backpack Patent, which was authorized by the US Patent and Trademark Workplace final week, consists of some fairly weird specs, together with that the wearable would possibly have the ability to detect consumer speech and make Siri-style ideas and, for some, The rationale, has the power to document and retailer audio.

Because the weblog publish signifies, it is also potential that the yet-to-be-named backpack could have the power to establish objects round it, offer you instructions, entry the cloud, and discuss to different good units — as a result of who would not need that speaking Dora the Explorer-style bag with intelligence synthetic?

If all this stunned you, the newly authorized patent proposal additionally consists of plenty of useful illustrations exhibiting a number of the methods the backpack could possibly be used.

Amongst these illustrations: an individual skating whereas their backpack tells them to end up of bounds, and one other reveals the wearer standing in entrance of a poster of the Beatles’ $5 live performance, for which they presumably should buy tickets by saying inside vary of the wearable’s microphones, “Hey, backpack Purchase the tickets.” (There is no such thing as a phrase on how the Backpack will deliver John Lennon and George Harrison again from the useless, or the way it will handle to deliver ticket costs right down to this historic inexpensive worth level.)

previous mannequin

This, in fact, is not the primary “good” backpack design we have heard of.

For instance, one significantly heartbreaking Indiegogo marketing campaign managed to lift precisely $0 in 2020 for one more AI-powered backpack referred to as the “BaqPaq,” a few of whose specs really seem like just like these proposed by Microsoft with its personal patent.

With this context in thoughts, Microsoft could have been proper when the corporate advised in its patent software that wearable “digital assistants” powered by synthetic intelligence might represent a rising shopper market.

“Digital assistants have gotten extra numerous as a result of advances in computing,” reads the jargon-heavy product description. “Present ideas relate to enhancements in wearable digital assistants that may carry out varied duties for the advantage of customers.”

Translation: Individuals need their good merchandise to do extra. With Microsoft investing closely in AI — to not point out the expertise turning into extra superior than it was just some years in the past, RIP to BaqPaq — it could be time to launch the Good Backpack in any case. As all the time, the caveat about patents is that the majority do not work.

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