Headphones Apple and Samsung keep pushing AI — even though almost nobody wants it

A feature nobody asked for, but everyone now has to scroll past in the app. The Anker Soundcore Space 2 Pro are the latest case study: $249 wireless over-ears with great sound, great ANC, great call quality, and an ‘AI chatbot’ tab in the app that doesn’t work. Not fully.

Not yet. Anker confirms only “Hey Anka” voice activation and basic chats are live. Everything else, real-time EQ adjustment, voice-controlled playback, text-based interaction, is still in development. But it’s already in the app.

Already visible. Already misleading. That’s not software lag. That’s marketing ahead of engineering.

And it’s happening across the board. The AirPods Max 2 and Galaxy Buds 4 Pro ship with Live Translation and meeting transcription that do work, so Tom’s Guide gave them credit. The Liberty 5 Pro Max earned four stars and a Recommended badge for accurate call transcription. The Space 2 Pro got 3.5 stars, and a long, frustrated review, because its AI isn’t functional, just foreshadowed.

Meanwhile, Cambridge Audio launched the Melomania A100 SE in October 2026: $149 earbuds with no AI claims at all. Just sound quality that reviewers called ‘supreme’, battery life that lasts, and comfort that sticks. It got four stars and the Recommended badge too. No neural-net chips.

No chatbots. No ‘compute-in-memory’ jargon. Just music. At $149, it undercuts the Galaxy Buds 4 ($149) and AirPods 5 ($129–$149) on pure audio value, and beats them on battery and fit, per Tom’s Guide.

So why does AI keep showing up? Not because users want it. Because brands fear silence. Fear being left behind in a race no one entered.

Fear that ‘just headphones’ isn’t enough for a press release, a keynote slide, or a shelf tag at Best Buy or Reliance Digital. The price stays the same either way. The Space 2 Pro is $249 in the US. ₹22,990 in India, per Anker’s global pricing page. The Melomania A100 SE is $149, no Indian price listed yet.

Apple and Samsung haven’t announced new AI-focused models this quarter, but their current flagships (AirPods Max 2, Galaxy Buds 4 Pro) continue to push those features front-and-center, even as user demand remains flat. Anker says it’s investigating the app discrepancy. No timeline. No patch date.

Just ‘looking into it’. Which means the next firmware update, and the first working version of that chatbot, could arrive any Thursday. Or never. For now, the message is clear: if you want headphones that play music, block noise, and take calls, skip the AI tabs.

Look at the drivers. Check the ANC rating. Read the battery claim. Ignore the chip name.

Because ‘neural-net compute-in-memory’ doesn’t make a note richer. It just makes the manual longer.