Plaud's first AI earbuds have arrived - what they can do

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AI wearables company Plaud, known for its AI notetaking devices, has entered the earbuds game. Will it capture skeptics?

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The company's new Plaud One Explorer Edition , a pair of AI-enabled earbuds, is available for preorder today at $250. Plaud also offers the clip-on NotePin and NotePin S , released in January, as well as the Note and Note Pro (a card-style recorder). These devices are carryable or wearable in some form, but that the Plaud One Explorer Edition are earbuds is a new style for the company.

In the release, Plaud argues that earbuds are an optimal interface for increasingly agentic AI systems to assist users. "In the agent era, just speak," the company wrote.

Users can wear the earbuds traditionally, but they also work from within their case, placed on a table during a meeting to capture audio, for example. They capture in-person conversations, calls, virtual meetings, or just the wearer brainstorming aloud to themself. As for who's listening, it's Plaud Agent, integrating with platforms like Google Calendar, Notion, and Slack to carry out actions you dictate to the earbuds. The agent runs on "a combination of proprietary and third-party model technology," a Plaud representative told ZDNET via email.

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"Plaud Agent also produces finished work products, from emails to documents and presentations," Plaud said. "These artifacts are ready to edit, share, or export the moment they are generated."

While that will ultimately be up to the user, Plaud emphasized the agentic capabilities of the intelligence behind the hardware. The workflow it envisions lets you build rapport with the agent as it builds context from your interactions over time.

Much like its other products, Plaud said the pair "captures the live conversation, understands intent in real time, and acts across your tools proactively." The earbuds also connect with Plaud Intelligence, a platform that lets users pick from a selection of frontier models. Plaud said it's also upgraded Intelligence with better memory and stronger context alongside the new earbuds.

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That ability to use whichever LLM they prefer with the earbuds is what Plaud hopes will set it apart from Apple and Google's earbuds, which connect to each company's respective AI, as well as forthcoming and rumored hardware from AI-first companies like OpenAI. Rather than being bound to the provider's specific LLM, Plaud One aims to attract a variety of brand-agnostic wearable enthusiasts.