Action cameras have been around for some time now, with brands like GoPro and DJI scooping up the market share. But what happens when a company comes out of nowhere with a response to the action camera industry that finally offers a unique twist? This may be exactly what Looki is looking to achieve with its new Looki L1 AI-Equipped Lifelogging Camera.
So what is a Looki L1? That makes for an excellent question! It is, sort of, similar to an action camera, while it is also something completely different. You can wear it and capture photos and videos like any other camera, and you can even use it as an audio capture device. But its real purpose is to follow you around throughout the day, capturing various moments as you go. Then, it brings in AI to take those moments and create a sizzle reel of your day’s experiences, shortening everything into a 30-60 second clip (as well as some other features). It is also a wearable AI that you can interact with throughout the day. So is it an action camera? Kind of, but not really.
It is designed to be worn around your neck, using the magnetic necklace-like accessory that comes with it. You turn it on and continue with your day, remembering to use it to take images, audio, or video as you go. It needs all of this content to be able to create various end-of-day results, so you want to take plenty of media so that it can more easily find the most exciting shots.
You can also make use of a more user-friendly automated approach that Looki calls Story Mode. This is what most users are likely going to use when taking advantage of the AI-assisted features. When enabling this mode, the camera will take short clips of video (usually around 9 to 15 seconds) every two minutes. By doing this, it captures short bursts of your day, making it easier to capture something exciting without you having to remember to hit record.
Not only does this content help contribute to the AI-assisted features that create things like an end-of-day sizzle reel, but you can also interact with the AI to quickly find moments within your day. Such as asking it to find moments you spent at the beach, where it would then filter everything to just clips related to the beach that day. So if you end up with a ton of clips at the end of the day, it isn’t too hard to find something specific.
Controlling the features of the camera is easy, as there are only two physical buttons to make use of, and one touch-sensitive option. Depending on whether you single-press or press and hold, you can capture an image, start recording video or audio, or trigger Story Mode.
As for the touch-sensitive option, this is the face of the camera, just below the lens. If you press and hold within this flat area, it will trigger AI to start listening. You can ask it all sorts of things, like you can with most AI solutions. For example, you can ask it about the weather, or about a random fact, or how-to you are looking for. So it is a wearable AI solution, as well as a lifelogging camera.
These buttons are also used to turn the camera on or off. Pretty simple, and you can also make use of the app (Android or iOS) to control the various modes of capture as well.
Using the app, not only can you control the various modes of capture, but you can also view, download, or delete content that it captures. As well as update firmware, upload captured content to be analyzed (as the cloud AI features won’t touch it till you do), and interact with AI to help create new content, or simply talk to AI like you would on your phone.
The app offers various sections, such as the “For You” section, which organizes everything into a sort of timeline, showing everything AI has generated for you. This is where you will find your latest content, which includes your summarized sizzle reel of the day, a short journal paragraph about the day, a longer multi-paragraph/topic entry with images, and even a cartoon-themed comic that offers a collage of various highlights.
There is also a “Lifelog” section, which acts as a calendar view of all content captured that you can easily bounce around looking for specific content.
As mentioned, it comes with the necklace (or neck lanyard, if you aren’t fond of the term necklace) that attaches magnetically to the back of the Looki L1 camera. It can be adjusted to fit the size of your neck so that it can rest comfortably and in the right orientation. It also contains a USB-C port that is used to charge the camera when it is attached.
It also comes with a small silicone piece that can be slid onto the back of the magnetic mount, although we found its use to be inconclusive since it causes the camera to point upwards a little too much, making captured content look like you are more focused on the ceiling than you are what is straight ahead (you’ll see this in a moment with some of the videos).
There are also optional accessories, such as a magnetic clip accessory and a magnetic stand that can also charge the camera when attached.
So what does it look like?
I know, I know. You want to see examples of what this thing can do! Don’t worry, I have collected a little of everything to show off. After all, it is the most important part of the story.
So starting with pictures, I took a few random pictures around the office, focusing on artsy shots that prove that I am not a photographer. I wanted to get close up to see what kind of detail it would capture. You can view some of these shots by clicking on the above image, which will let you download a zip file filled with the original photos from the Looki L1.
The images turned out ok, although I wouldn’t try to compare them with what a modern smartphone can pull off. I guess these are meant to simply be a soft capture of your daily life, but nothing you are going to want to use professionally. You’ll see that it is the same with the video content as well, as the camera sensor is small and the video and image content is compressed to help reduce the need for fancy hardware. So maybe this is more of a camera that is best for kids and teens looking to share social snippets of their daily life, and not so much for adults or professionals hoping to get high-quality footage.
What really shone for us was the little collage comic strips it would create after each day. They aren’t always that spot-on, but they are fun. The comic to the right was the result of when my senior editor took it out to use during one of his side ventures (audio engineering). Capturing a summary of his day into a single comic.
You see, when you first set the camera up, it walks you through capturing an image of yourself with it, which it then uses to create an avatar that is used throughout the experience, including the comics, like this one.
It does make mistakes, though, as the AI is only so smart when it comes to figuring things out. But it does still do a good job at capturing key moments, such as shaking someone’s hand, or pointing something out to someone you are with, or when it notices you spent a lot of time hanging around someone, or a brand/logo in the background, such as a booth or a building. It uses all of this information, and more, to define what you are doing, the people you meet, and the places you have been.
My senior editor also pointed out that it added glasses to his face, even though he doesn’t wear glasses and wasn’t even wearing sunglasses that day. However, he did spend some time around someone else at the show who was also rocking the bald look, that did have glasses. So it likely got confused and combined the attributes of both individuals into one. Regardless, the result was still amazing.
As for the video content in general, it captures everything in 1080p, although, as mentioned, it is noticeably compressed. So you won’t be looking to do anything too professional with this. But if you just need something simple for social media or similar, the resulting content can be quite helpful.
The above video offers a selection of snippets taken from the camera, either in video mode or making use of the Story Mode (mostly the latter). As you can see, there is a bit of compression there to help make sure the hardware can handle everything, and I am sure it has a little to do with saving on cloud power as well. You can also see that the camera was pointed a bit high, looking more above everyone’s head vs straight forward. This was due to the silicone pad being applied to the back of the magnetic mount. Again, we couldn’t find the purpose of this, so we removed it after the show and never went back to using it.
But as I said, clips like this can still be useful for various things, like social media or simply cataloging events for your own recollection.
As for the sizzle reels, this can be a complete hit or miss on any day. But you can, thankfully, ask it to try again. But normally, at the end of the day, when you submit everything to the cloud to be processed (or “if” you decide to do this), it will begin cranking away at a video sizzle reel of your day’s experiences. Again, it is just a short reel of around 30-60 seconds on average.
As you can tell, some of us had visited a convention (NAB 2026), as seen in some of the video clips in the last video. The camera was mostly set to Story Mode, where it was randomly capturing clips throughout the day, every few minutes. So, we had uploaded it to the cloud at the end of the day to see what AI would create using the content. The result was the following video…
It added music and text to the sizzle reel, and even added a spoken voice that talked about getting out of the house and into the world. It identified the fact that we were at a tech-related trade convention, and it identified brand names, or at least the text within the logos that it then used for random titles on the screen. None of this was added by us. It was all created by AI and combined into the random sizzle reel above.
Although we did find the spoken voice to be a little out of place and corny. So we opened the AI in the app and asked it to recreate a new vlog video that didn’t contain any spoken words like that. To our surprise, it immediately began chugging away at a remake and said it would only take around 20 minutes. Around that time, it had a new video completed. So you don’t have to wait overnight for a reel to be made. You can actually have the AI cook one up whenever you feel like it, it seems. But the resulting remake was as follows…
This time, it decided to do a portrait-mode video reel, but it did do what we asked. The text on the screen was still hit or miss, but the talking was gone, and it just focused on text, music, and effects. This wasn’t too bad.
Then, that night, our senior editor took it for a spin at an event he was producing/mixing on the side, and the reel it spit out then was a bit better. Even the text on the screen was a little better. It even identified that the women on stage were playing string instruments. You can see it all in the following video…
So, as you can see, the Looki L1 camera is similar to a normal action camera, while also being something completely different. It isn’t meant to be a device that captures a specific experience you had. Instead, it is meant to capture all of your experiences throughout a day, turning your day into a blogging (or vlogging) adventure.
Our Conclusion
This really does make for an interesting and unique approach to walking around with a camera. Its features make it unique enough to stand out, despite there being a lot of competition within the mobile/action camera industry. Enough to say that this camera is a thing of its own. It offers several features, and the AI capabilities are a lot of fun and make it more than just a normal camera. The ability to easily search for specific videos using the AI is fun.
Due to the compression within the video and images, you likely won’t be looking to get too professional with it. But it does seem that it could easily find many other uses for social media and other similar functions of sharing, such as a personal blog/vlog that you commit to just for fun.
Our colleagues reacted to it in many ways, some thinking it is a fantastic accessory to a person’s day, while others thought it might be limited to certain age groups. One of our colleagues went as far as calling it a really cool toy for teens, but nothing an adult would consider (and that it even looks like a toy, being that it is shaped to look like something out of Monsters Inc). But really, it all comes down to the individual user. Maybe it is all about age more than anything else. Either way, we can easily see certain types of users wanting to make use of it.
So what do you think? With an MSRP of $199, would this be something you could easily see incorporating into your daily life? Or at least the days you’d be willing to share with others? Make sure to take to the comments below to share your own opinions.
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