Apple wants to put AI in your pocket — but Samsung is putting it on your finger

Samsung hopes to convince people that wearing a ring with built-in AI will enhance their health and wellbeing, and keep them in the Galaxy universe.

• Apple is ready to put AI on iPhones, iPads, Macs and Watches.
• Samsung has decided to put AI into a ring.
• The Korean company just revealed the Galaxy Ring, a wearable designed to track health biomarkers with AI.

Apple wants to put artificial intelligence in your pocket or on your desk — but Samsung wants to put it on your finger.

On Wednesday, the South Korean company officially unveiled the Galaxy Ring, a wearable piece of smart jewelry it first teased in January.

While the titanium ring's black, silver, and gold models look deceptively simple, they represent Samsung's latest hardware to boast Galaxy AI, its bold alternative to the AI-led Apple Intelligence platform announced in June.

According to Samsung, the Galaxy Ring has been built with health and wellness in mind. Its design features pick up various biomarkers, which its AI can use to give wearers a more "comprehensive understanding" of themselves.

A new feature called an "energy score," for example, will give users an overview of their overall well-being based on an assessment of seven health metrics, such as sleeping, heart rate and activity, carried out by on-device AI.

Other AI features include "wellness tips," which aim to deliver AI-powered advice to users about steps they can take to improve their health based on the assessment made by the energy score feature. There's also a dedicated sleep AI algorithm designed to review and improve sleep quality.

According to James Kitto, head of Samsung's UK mobile division, the ring is a key part of its ambitions to offer users a more personalized and "unified experience."

The more data Galaxy AI can get about a user, the more information it will have to enhance the services it provides to users.

In Samsung's ideal scenario, then, that would mean a user with a smartphone, smartwatch, and smart ring should have a better experience with Galaxy AI than sometime with just one device.

"The Galaxy Ring just adds further to that," Kitto said. "This becomes an integrated passive health data collector that allows you to track your sleep overnight, track long-term health data trends."

Samsung is not first to the smart ring party, though. Finland-based Oura has been selling versions of its smart ring since 2015, for example.

Samsung says users can wear the ring 24/7, whether they're sleeping or going for a shower or swim. It'll just need a recharge every once in a while, as its battery lasts up to seven days.