Almost to the day, a year ago I was in the market for a new mouse and I searched for “鼠标” (computer mouse) on Taobao. On each page (of 100: the max it will return) of 48 results, at least 30-40 results would be “AI” mice.
Compare and contrast with today:
Screen shot of search on 鼠标
Maybe I’m blind but I’m not seeing a single “AI” mouse there. Just to be sure, I searched specifically for “AI鼠标” (AI computer mouse):
Screen shot of search on AI鼠标
Sure enough there’s plenty (maxing out the search results again!) listings for AI mice.
But AI mice are no longer the default they were last year at this time. The world’s largest market has decided that AI is no longer That Thing That Will Be Everywhere.
(Also of interest is that almost all the AI mice are linked to Deepseek now, instead of ChatGPT as they were last year.)
Man, I hated this trend back then. AI was built in everything they could, even more so than devices that can run Doom. What does a mouse have to do with typing? Talk to type? Fuck right off. I use a mouse to move a pointer. Give me the shit that does what exactly it was designed for!
Apparently all these “AI mice” do is have a special button you click and have your AI chatbot of choice (or whichever one is pre-programmed if you go with a major brand of mouse) open in a window. If you have their software installed.
It’s so incredibly stupid as a concept.
