Tony Fadell, the man known as the father of the iPod, says the first generation of AI gadgets has already failed.

Speaking at MIT's Future Fest, Fadell displayed photos of three products he said were headed for the scrap heap: the Rabbit R1, the Humane AI Pin and the Limitless pendant.

"These were kind of the Gen 1 AI products," he said, adding that they solved no genuine problem and offered novelty for engineers rather than anything useful.

The Rabbit R1 sold briskly at first but was panned for sluggish performance, while Humane's AI Pin drew criticism over overheating, poor battery life and unreliable interactions.

Fadell, who also founded Nest before its sale to Google, argued that trust and safety will decide who wins in AI, and predicted that the agents people truly adopt will run on the device itself for privacy.

He also said companies without vast phone fleets, like Meta and OpenAI, are chasing hardware because phones carry the sensors an assistant needs.