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The AI graveyard: a running list of projects and startups that didn’t make it

Relay, an AI-powered workflow automation tool built as an alternative to Zapier, shut down entirely in August. The product let users automate email and task workflows using AI agents, but as OpenAI, Google, and other larger platforms built similar automation directly into their own tools, five-year-old Relay struggled to hold on to a reason to exist as a stand-alone product. More recently, chatbot platform Character.ai filed for bankruptcy just five years after launching.

Relay 是一款旨在替代 Zapier 的人工智能工作流自动化工具，已于 8 月彻底关闭。该产品允许用户利用 AI 智能体自动处理电子邮件和任务工作流，但随着 OpenAI、谷歌及其他大型平台将类似的自动化功能直接内置于其自身工具中，这家成立五年的公司难以维持其作为独立产品的存在理由。最近，聊天机器人平台 Character.ai 在成立仅五年后便申请了破产。

Aside from Character.ai and Relay, plenty of AI bets never even survive inside the companies that build them. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, about 42% of AI initiatives are ultimately abandoned by their corporate parents. The reasons vary: insufficient funding, technical challenges, competition, difficulty scaling, or just weak user demand. The result is a growing AI graveyard.

除了 Character.ai 和 Relay 之外，许多人工智能项目甚至无法在开发它们的母公司内部存活下来。根据标普全球市场情报（S&P Global Market Intelligence）的数据，约 42% 的人工智能计划最终被其企业母公司放弃。原因各不相同：资金不足、技术挑战、竞争压力、扩展困难或仅仅是用户需求疲软。其结果便是日益壮大的人工智能“坟场”。

Below is a look at some of the most notable AI products, startups, launches, and bets that have shut down, pivoted, or significantly missed expectations. Think of it less as a scorecard of flops than as a record of what these attempts can (hopefully) teach the rest of the industry.

以下列出了一些最引人注目的已关闭、转型或表现远低于预期的人工智能产品、初创公司、发布项目和投资尝试。与其将其视为一份失败记录，不如将其看作是对这些尝试能（希望）教给行业其他部分经验的总结。

OpenAI has taken several stumbles. Even the biggest players aren’t immune. OpenAI, one of the most valuable private companies in the world, has had its own share of casualties and missteps. One of the more recent examples was its attempt to turn ChatGPT into a broader “super app.” On July 9, OpenAI updated the app to combine several experiences, including separate “Chat,” “Codex,” and “Work” modes, while renaming the traditional, familiar version “ChatGPT Classic.” The redesign quickly drew criticism from users who found the new interface confusing and cluttered, and OpenAI rolled back the change soon after, bringing the familiar ChatGPT interface back.

OpenAI 也曾多次跌倒。即使是最大的参与者也无法幸免。作为全球最有价值的私营公司之一，OpenAI 也有自己的损失和失误。最近的一个例子是它试图将 ChatGPT 转变为一个更广泛的“超级应用”。7 月 9 日，OpenAI 更新了该应用，整合了包括独立的“聊天”、“Codex”和“工作”模式在内的多种体验，并将传统且熟悉的版本重命名为“ChatGPT Classic”。这次重新设计很快招致了用户的批评，他们认为新界面令人困惑且杂乱无章，OpenAI 不久后撤回了这一更改，恢复了熟悉的 ChatGPT 界面。

That wasn’t OpenAI’s only attempt to pull everything under one roof. The company has also shut down several stand-alone apps and folded their features directly into ChatGPT — a strategy that’s worked out better than the redesign did. ChatGPT Atlas, a stand-alone AI-powered web browser, lasted less than a year before being discontinued on August 9, with its most useful features absorbed into ChatGPT. The company did the same thing with Operator, an AI agent that could browse the web and complete tasks on a user’s behalf, and OpenAI has increasingly built image generation directly into ChatGPT, shrinking the role of DALL-E as its own separate destination for creating images. We also can’t forget its video-sharing platform, Sora, which struggled with high operating costs and user-retention challenges and shut down in March 2026.

这并不是 OpenAI 唯一一次试图将所有功能整合到一起的尝试。该公司还关闭了几个独立应用程序，并将它们的功能直接整合到 ChatGPT 中——这一策略比重新设计的效果要好。ChatGPT Atlas 是一款独立的 AI 驱动网络浏览器，在 8 月 9 日停用前仅存在了不到一年，其最有用的功能已被吸收到 ChatGPT 中。该公司对 Operator（一个可以代表用户浏览网页并完成任务的 AI 智能体）也采取了同样的操作，并且 OpenAI 越来越多地将图像生成功能直接内置于 ChatGPT 中，从而削弱了 DALL-E 作为独立图像创作平台的作用。此外，我们也不能忘记其视频共享平台 Sora，该平台因高昂的运营成本和用户留存挑战而于 2026 年 3 月关闭。

Apple’s Siri AI: When Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence in 2024, an improved Siri was one of the highlighted features. The pitch promised a Siri that could understand context, know what was happening across apps, and get tasks done effectively. However, Apple repeatedly pushed back the release of the new Siri, citing various reasons like engineering issues and bugs. This delay eventually contributed to a $250 million settlement over claims regarding how Apple marketed the AI capabilities of the iPhone 16. Siri AI finally appeared in the iOS 27 beta this past July, with the new AI-powered version rolling out to English-language users first this month; support for other languages is expected to follow.

苹果的 Siri AI：当苹果在 2024 年发布 Apple Intelligence 时，改进后的 Siri 是重点功能之一。其宣传承诺 Siri 将能够理解上下文、了解各应用间的动态并有效完成任务。然而，苹果多次推迟了新 Siri 的发布，理由包括工程问题和漏洞等。这种延迟最终导致苹果因 iPhone 16 的 AI 功能营销方式相关索赔而支付了 2.5 亿美元的和解金。Siri AI 终于在今年 7 月的 iOS 27 测试版中出现，新的 AI 版本于本月首先向英语用户推出；预计后续将支持其他语言。

Microsoft’s Recall: Announced at its 2024 Build developer conference, Microsoft’s Recall feature was pitched as an AI-powered “photographic memory” for Windows PCs, periodically taking screenshots of what a user was doing so they could later search back through their own digital history. Predictably, the announcement triggered an immediate backlash over privacy and security. Critics argued that Recall could create a searchable archive of highly sensitive information, including passwords, private messages, financial details, and other activity. Microsoft delayed the feature for nearly a year, giving the company time to rethink its security and privacy protections. Even after a redesign, the controversy hasn’t gone away. A cybersecurity researcher recently built a tool that could extract and display data that Recall had captured, reviving questions about whether Microsoft has actually fixed the underlying problem.

微软的 Recall：在 2024 年 Build 开发者大会上宣布的微软 Recall 功能被宣传为 Windows PC 的 AI 驱动“摄影记忆”，它会定期截取用户操作的屏幕截图，以便用户日后搜索自己的数字历史记录。不出所料，这一公告立即引发了关于隐私和安全的强烈抵制。批评者认为，Recall 可能会创建一个包含密码、私人信息、财务细节和其他活动等高度敏感信息的可搜索档案。微软将该功能推迟了近一年，以便有时间重新思考其安全和隐私保护措施。即使在重新设计后，争议依然存在。一位网络安全研究人员最近开发了一种工具，可以提取并显示 Recall 捕获的数据，这再次引发了关于微软是否真正解决了根本问题的质疑。

Notion Mail: Notion Mail launched in April 2025 as an AI-focused email product designed to help users organize and automate their inboxes. However, the company noticed its users were using separate AI agents to handle their email inboxes instead. As a result, Notion Mail is scheduled to shut down on September 22.

Notion Mail：Notion Mail 于 2025 年 4 月推出，是一款专注于人工智能的电子邮件产品，旨在帮助用户整理和自动化收件箱。然而，该公司注意到用户转而使用独立的 AI 智能体来处理他们的电子邮件收件箱。因此，Notion Mail 计划于 9 月 22 日关闭。

Humane AI Pin: The Humane AI Pin is probably one of the most well-known failures in AI hardware. Designed to provide AI features through a wearable device rather than a traditional smartphone, Humane raised $230 million from investors and garnered significant attention. But the product struggled mightily with performance, and the situation worsened when Humane warned customers to stop using its charging case because of a potential battery fire risk. Humane then shut down its AI Pin business in February 2025, with most of the company’s assets acquired by HP for $116 million.

Humane AI Pin：Humane AI Pin 可能是 AI 硬件领域最著名的失败案例之一。Humane 旨在通过可穿戴设备而非传统智能手机提供 AI 功能，从投资者那里筹集了 2.3 亿美元并获得了极大的关注。但该产品在性能上表现挣扎，当 Humane 因潜在的电池起火风险警告客户停止使用其充电盒时，情况变得更糟。随后，Humane 于 2025 年 2 月关闭了其 AI Pin 业务，公司大部分资产被惠普以 1.16 亿美元收购。

Rabbit R1: The Rabbit R1 was another heavily hyped AI device. Unveiled at CES in January 2024, the AI companion was designed to perform tasks on behalf of its owner. Rabbit said it had sold 100,000 units shortly after launch. However, strong initial sales didn’t mean it was a strong product. Early reviews described the device as unfinished, with unreliable performance and a limited number of useful integrations. The company hasn’t given up, though. It has continued updating the R1, positioning it as a computer controller capable of performing agentic tasks. It also recently announced a new hardware project, dubbed “Project Cyberdeck.”

Rabbit R1：Rabbit R1 是另一款被大肆炒作的 AI 设备。该 AI 伴侣于 2024 年 1 月在 CES 上亮相，旨在代表其所有者执行任务。Rabbit 表示，在发布后不久就售出了 10 万台。然而，强劲的初期销量并不意味着它是一款强大的产品。早期评论称该设备尚未完成，性能不可靠，且有用的集成功能有限。不过，该公司并没有放弃。它一直在更新 R1，将其定位为能够执行智能体任务的计算机控制器。它最近还宣布了一个名为“Project Cyberdeck”的新硬件项目。