What would a screen-free future look like? Humane, a company founded five years ago by a former Apple executive, may offer a glimpse of its first product, as clips of a TED Talk demo were leaked ahead of schedule.

Excerpts from the talk by Imran Chaudhry, Humane's president and former design director of Apple's human interface team, have been trending on Twitter.

Like the communicators in Star Trek, the wearables are worn on the chest and can be controlled by tap or voice.

"This is a new type of wearable device, a platform built entirely from scratch for artificial intelligence," explains Chaudhri in comments transcribed by Inverse (opens in new tab). 'And it is completely standalone. There is no need to pair it with a smartphone or any other device."

How does it work in practice? First, it appears to function as a sort of wearable Alexa or Google Assistant, accessing "emails, calendar invitations, and messages" and intelligently pulling context and answering questions, as in the clip below.

Like the Google Assistant, it is also shown translating on the fly, but with an important difference: while pressing a button on the device, Chaudhri says, in a suitably complex phrase, "An invisible device should be so natural to use that you almost forget it exists."

After a three-second pause, the device repeats the phrase in French. It is in a somewhat quiet voice, but it is unmistakably Chaudry's own voice, rather than the robotic tone of a typical virtual assistant.

The device also appears to have a built-in camera; at one point in a talk filmed on Twitter, Chaudhry pulls a milky bar from his pocket, places it in front of the device, and says, "Can I eat this." After another three-second pause, the AI said, "Milky bars contain cocoa butter. Given your intolerance, you may want to avoid them."

"I'll eat it anyway," Chaudhry tells the device. 'Enjoy.'

The device's last leaked party trick is how it handles when it actually needs to see something: an incoming call from Humane CEO Bethany Bongiorno, Apple's former software engineering director. The call information is projected onto Chaudhry's hand.

Humane certainly has high hopes for the potential of this technology. Theoretically, there would be no distractions while receiving smartphone-like assistance.

Chaudhri says: "It is screenless, seamless, sensing-enabled, and can utilize computing power while being around.

But before getting too excited, it is worth reflecting on a few things. First, this is a controlled stage demonstration, and it is doubtful that much of what we are seeing here is actually happening in real time, rather than pre-programmed.

In particular, the translation function seems a bit too well done. And even if it were, how would they know to translate into French rather than Spanish or Japanese?

Even if all of this is feasible and will be available in the next few years, there is some question as to whether it is actually more practical than the smartphones we carry around today. Talking to one's chest in public is much less private than fidgeting and tapping one's screen.

And that is minus the fashion factor. Unless such high-tech is adopted in large numbers, it will always be geeky, no matter how useful it actually is or isn't.

There is reason to be skeptical. Nevertheless, I can't wait for the full TED Talk to be released.

It is not clear when that will be. Journalist Zarif Ali has said April 22 (opens in new tab), but as of this writing, it has not yet been posted on the TED website (opens in new tab) or YouTube channel (opens in new tab). See this page.