All posts tagged: smart glasses

Is It Possible to Make Smart Glasses That Aren’t Creepy?

Is It Possible to Make Smart Glasses That Aren’t Creepy?

Published by skeptic

Face computers are on the upswing, as companies, massive and tiny, are all vying for nuggets in the smart-glasses gold rush. That also means the industry is garnering its fair share of criticism, mostly focusing on the fact that creeps can abuse camera-equipped smart glasses to capture photos and videos of people without their knowledge or consent. The prime target for such criticism is the biggest company in the space, Meta. The company’s smart glasses can capture images, audio, and video of whatever and whoever the wearer is looking at. That alone is enough to alarm anyone concerned about protecting their privacy. Meta’s smart glasses do have an indicator light to warn bystanders when they’re being recorded, though some Meta users have figured out how to bypass those safety features and disable the lights. More recently, the company has added anti-tamper features that disable the glasses if a user has meddled with them. Other concerns about the glasses have continued to mount. Earlier this year, Meta programmed a feature that, if enabled, would add face-recognition …

Meta’s New Feel-Good AI Ad Uses a Song About the World Ending

Meta’s New Feel-Good AI Ad Uses a Song About the World Ending

Published by skeptic

On Thursday morning, Meta published an ad to its official Instagram account with the message that artificial intelligence will not “make us less connected” or “leave us behind.” It was set to the 1972 David Bowie track “Five Years,” which is about, among other things, the end of the world. “Call us optimists, call us dreamers, call us whatever the hell you want — but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds,” the narrator says, as a toddler plays with a butterfly, two parents laugh with their infant, and Jalen Brunson waves at the Knicks Championship Parade. (The ad also takes special care to highlight use cases for its controversial smart glasses that are not, say, harassing women while surreptitiously recording them.) The snippet of “Five Years” used in the ad includes the following lyrics: I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodies I saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVs My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare I had to cram so many things to store everything in …

Halliday’s New Smart Glasses Skip the Camera

Halliday’s New Smart Glasses Skip the Camera

Published by skeptic

There’s a new pair of camera-less smart glasses in town: the Halliday G2, designed to listen to workplace meetings, absorb what happens, and summarize all the interesting bits, much like always-listening wearables. Halliday says the mics can be turned on for meetings, using AI voice commands, or making phone calls, but switch off when not in use. They’re normal-ish looking glasses, meant to blend into a professional environment, namely by not having cameras on them. They cost $599, with first shipments planned for September 2026. There are paid subscription tiers for the AI services that range from $10 per month to $99, but users can choose a free tier that offers 120 minutes of recording time. Halliday’s glasses might not be met well by one of its competitors. Smart glasses brand Even Realities launched its G2 glasses late last year, proudly focusing on the lack of cameras in its eyewear; Halliday’s G2 shares the same name and channels the same mantra, not to mention a striking resemblance. (In both cases, G2 is short for Generation …

Here’s the Truth About Whether Meta’s NameTag Face Recognition Tech ‘Exists’

Here’s the Truth About Whether Meta’s NameTag Face Recognition Tech ‘Exists’

Published by skeptic

Does a software feature exist if its code has been deployed to the devices of millions of people but they can’t use it yet? Not if you work at Meta. The company’s executives have spent the last few weeks making this semantic argument about NameTag, the in-development face-recognition system that Meta built for its smart glasses. The inevitable result is confusion, but that’s easy enough to clear up. On June 4, WIRED reported that Meta included robust—but inactive—code for NameTag in Meta AI, the companion app for Meta Ray-Ban glasses that has been downloaded tens of millions of times. In response to our story, Andy Stone, Meta’s vice president of communications, responded in part by writing on X, “Here’s a thing: Wired reports Meta didn’t answer several questions about how this will work. How could we? The feature doesn’t exist!” Meta removed the NameTag code from Meta AI the next day. According to WIRED’s analysis of the Meta AI app, code for NameTag appeared in the app as early as January. In mid-February, The New …

Smart glasses without a camera? Even Realities bets productivity beats recording everyone

Smart glasses without a camera? Even Realities bets productivity beats recording everyone

Published by skeptic

In the past few years, multiple tech executives have told us that glasses could be the next big interface for consumer hardware. And yet, today’s smart glasses rely a lot on phones, even if they have good hardware. Even Realities’ G2 smart glasses are in the same boat. They’re a premium-looking pair of glasses with a neon-style heads-up display you can see in any lighting — but their functionality relies heavily on their connectivity with the phone, which can be** unreliable and frustrating. Even Realities takes a different approach to smart glasses than players like Meta. Their devices have a monochrome heads-up display that shows text and information in green, giving it the look of a neon board. There are no cameras or speakers, and that is by design. The company wants to focus on productivity rather than recording, so the people around you don’t have to worry about being filmed. The G2 is the second pair of smart glasses from Even Realities and an improvement over the G1 released a few years ago. The …

These New Smart Glasses From Solos Come With a Privacy Shield for the Cameras

These New Smart Glasses From Solos Come With a Privacy Shield for the Cameras

Published by skeptic

Smart glasses company Solos has long focused on audio-only smart glasses. On Tuesday, it announced two new pairs of glasses, one of which has a camera—but you can buy a separate accessory to hide the camera for privacy’s sake. Solos’ new smart glasses are the audio-only AirGo A6 and the second iteration of its camera-enabled glasses, the Solos AirGo V2. The latter was first announced last year as an effort to directly “outshine Meta.” These $299 glasses do just about everything you’d expect from Meta’s new $299 Meta Smartglasses, including photo and video capture, playing music, and interacting with an AI-powered assistant that can see what you see. They can be fitted with prescription lenses and have a 10- to 12-hour battery life. The AirGo V2 glasses can also be paired with a new Privacy Kit, a set of clip-on accessories that let wearers control what their camera glasses can access. The clip-on privacy shield blocks the cameras from view and from recording the world, allowing you to keep wearing the glasses in audio-only mode. …

Smart glasses maker Even Realities hits B valuation with 0M funding led by Meituan, Tencent

Smart glasses maker Even Realities hits $1B valuation with $150M funding led by Meituan, Tencent

Published by skeptic

Meta and Snap rolled out new smart glasses last month, the latest sign that the industry is racing to put a camera and an AI assistant onto users’ faces. As the fast-growing market heats up, upstarts like Even Realities are muscling in on the giants. Even Realities, a three-year-old Shenzhen-headquartered startup, has raised $150 million in a pre-Series B round led by Meituan and previous backer Tencent; the round valued the startup at $1 billion valuation. Founder and CEO Will Wang told TechCrunch that while rivals chase camera-equipped devices built around content capture and AI, his company is betting on display-first glasses that beam information straight into the wearer’s line of sight without giving up privacy. Even’s earlier backers are mostly high-profile China names — Hillhouse, Sequoia China, and Northern Light Venture Capital. Even was started by ex-Apple engineers in 2023. CEO Wang worked on the Apple Watch and iPhone; other co-founders came from tech, and two came from luxury eyewear companies, including Lindberg. The startup moved quickly, launching its first product, the G1, in …

Meta Is Charging a Subscription for Smart Glasses Features. Welcome to the New Era of Consumer Tech

Meta Is Charging a Subscription for Smart Glasses Features. Welcome to the New Era of Consumer Tech

Published by skeptic

Chris Harrison, director of the Future Interfaces Group at Carnegie Mellon University, doesn’t think the new subscription is to help pay for Meta’s AI spending. “The industry has made tremendous strides, even in the last six months, but certainly in the last 18 months, improving token generation efficiency—running these models much more efficiently,” Harrison says. “It’s not about recovering AI costs; it’s about monetizing customers.” As adoption grows, Harrison says, this is a way of “extracting value” from the platform. The company’s glasses are typically sold at cost, like the new $299 Meta-branded glasses that ditch the fancy Ray-Ban branding for an even lower price. Harrison says this helps get the glasses out in the world and increases the user base—then the subscription service grows revenue. But the danger of introducing subscription tiers is that a competitor comes in and offers all, if not most, of those features without charging users a monthly fee. One of those competitors is around the corner: Google is set to debut its own smart glasses later this year, made …

Meta’s Very Own Smart Glasses Go on Sale Today for 9

Meta’s Very Own Smart Glasses Go on Sale Today for $299

Published by skeptic

Speaking of, Bosworth says Meta has heard feedback that some folks don’t care for the camera capabilities on its smart glasses and would prefer audio-only glasses. “There’s a market demand for that product for sure.” Bosworth then said, “one thing at a time.” The Meta Fury. Photograph: Julian Chokkattu Earlier this month, WIRED discovered code in the public-facing Meta AI app, suggesting that Meta was gearing up to debut a face recognition feature in its consumer smart glasses, technology that may have been trained by a company that builds surveillance tools for the US military and police departments. After WIRED’s report, Meta deleted the code, and none of this technology is present in the new Meta Glasses. Ankit Brahmbhatt, senior director of Product Management for AI Glasses at Meta, tells WIRED there are “no plans for facial recognition,” as it’s not the focus for what the company is building here. Meta’s goal with these glasses is to get them onto more faces. “It’s more than just whether they fit—fit and comfort are extremely critical to …

They’re Making Cases for Smart Glasses Now

They’re Making Cases for Smart Glasses Now

Published by skeptic

Babe, wake up, they’re making phone cases for smart glasses now. A suite of bright clip-on frame covers for Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses are the first product from Lorika, an Italian startup that has described itself as “a team of entrepreneurs under 30.” They’re called Ontop because they go—you guessed it—on top of the glasses frames. The covers are polycarbonate plastic frames, with elastic polymers woven in for stability. One piece clips around the lens and covers the hinges that connect to the glasses’ arms. The others slap onto the arms. They don’t cover the glasses’ cameras or speakers. The covers are one millimeter thick, though clipping them onto the glasses does give them a noticeably chunkier look. The result is a brightly colored, deliberately loud look. They’re available today and cost $35 or $40 depending on the model. Courtesy of Lorika “If you want something else, something different on design, something more chubby, more puffy, you can get that,” says Giorgio Di Cesare, CEO of Lorika. Lorika does not have any official collaboration with …