Motorola’s Project Maxwell, an AI companion, is an interesting idea, but I don’t know how well it’ll do on the market — especially after the failure of the Humane AI Pin.
At CES 2026, I got the opportunity to see a demo of the AI companion, and it’s pretty interesting. It uses a camera to see the world around you, three microphones to hear what’s going on and a speaker so it can reply to your queries. It uses Lenovo/Motorola Qira to connect with your other Lenovo/Motorola devices with Google Gemini running in the background.
During my demo, the representative used Project Maxwell to describe what it was seeing, respond to simple questions about Vegas and asked for directions on how to get to the Sphere, which then agentically used Google Maps to direct me to the Sphere, and there was a live translation demonstration. And Qira’s voice was pretty amicable and personable; it felt like he was working with a real person.
Moreover, Project Maxwell looked pretty nice and uses a magnet solution, which can attach to a chain or can be worn like a pin. Of course, Motorola used a variety of colour options for Maxwell, which makes sense considering its partnership with Pantone. I also strongly believe that wearables should look nice and fashionable, like my Ray Ban Metas.
Despite being fashionable and using Google’s Gemini (probably my favourite AI assistant so far), it’s likely that people will not find the need for Project Maxwell. Firstly, it’s only confirmed to work with Motorola and Lenovo devices. Meaning, if you don’t already have a Motorola/Lenovo ecosystem, it might not be worth it for you, unless you plan on changing your devices. Additionally, it’s still unclear if Qira will require a subscription service or if you’ll need Gemini Pro — either way, it’ll be a better option than the Humane AI Pin, which pretty much required its own phone plan — and you may not want to pay for another monthly bill.
In theory, with Motorola AI features like Next Move, which tries to guess what you want to do next on your device based on what you’re currently doing and ‘Pay Attention,’ which will let Qira support meetings and conversations with real-time transcriptions, Project Maxwell could be pretty cool. And specifically focusing on Next Move, it might be great that Project Maxwell could see that you’re leaving your house and maybe remind you to grab your keys — but this is totally hypothetical.
I would love for Project Maxwell to succeed where the Humane AI Pin failed, and I think it’s great that Motorola is trying new innovative ideas. However, without putting it through its paces in a full review, I definitely can’t say whether people will find this technology useful.
