Sony Ear makes smartphone AI personal by putting your phone’s virtual assistant right into your ear.

Sony have unveiled their newest piece of tech – a wireless, self contained earbud that connects up to your phone to assist you with your duties. Working off of a variant of Google Now you can ask the earbud questions to google, messages to type, how the weather is and more.

First leaked on Saturday by notorious leaker Evan Blass in a tweet, he revealed a press rendering of the small device. As the earbud works off of your phone’s software and needs only to connect and sit in your ear the device features a simplistic, smooth design with no unnecessary features or any physical features.

The uniquely named ‘Sony Ear’ uses sensors that can tell your phone when it’s put into your ear and it becomes activated. Once there the bluetooth earbud is ready to act out your whims (restricted to the function of your standard AI) on your say-so, literally.

The device is supposedly designed to prevent users from having to handle their phones throughout the day, freeing them up for other things. As nice an idea as Sony may have behind this whether a single earbud, with a reported battery life of 3 & 1/2 hours, will be enough to disconnect people from their beloved smartphones – at least physically – is something I won’t bet on.

Motorola revealed something in a similar vein in 2014 with the Moto Hint, but it never really picked up – in part thanks to the infancy of bluetooth headsets at the time. Sony are hoping that with the ‘Ear’ they can produce a seamless conduit between the internet and our smartphones, and ourselves.

Sony announced the device at the first day of Mobile World Congress however have issued no release date.