I am absolutely AGOG to know why this has to be a separate device. It must involve hardware and/or instrumentation not built into smartphones. Microwave scanner? mini x-ray machine? neutrino detector??? what could it be
The market is ripe for ChatGPT in a box, replacing google home or Alexa desktop pucks. God knows the google home assistant has been detuned and detuned to the point it barely works for turning the lights on and off at this point. There's a handful of golf-ball shaped objects on AliExpress for $25 that provide this functionality, powered by an ESP32 IoT chip, but doesn't have wakeword capability (yet). I picked up two for a Home Assistant voice assistant project but haven't had time to dive into it yet.
Because Apple won’t give you access to what you need as a dev for this kind of thing on iPhone: always-on audio listening to multiple streams : ambient sound, my voice, whatever is playing in my headphones … think an AI assistant listens to audiobooks together with you and allows you to ask questions / lookup things etc …
Leaks were saying it's a Friend competitor https://friend.com
Just a chatbot in a box.