All posts tagged: smart glasses

At Meta Connect, the company’s smart glasses were everywhere

At Meta Connect, the company’s smart glasses were everywhere

Published by skeptic

If there was one thing that was obvious this from Meta Connect this year, it’s that the social media giant is all-in on its burgeoning line of smart glasses. Indeed, the glasses were pretty much everywhere at the annual event, where Meta shows off its newest hardware and AI products. Both Meta staff and the flocks of influencers who frequent the event seemed to arrive with the glasses glued to their faces. Most of the demos the company offered this week also involved the glasses. I swiftly joined the bespectacled masses and found myself trying on pair after pair of Meta’s high-tech specs. One of the more notable products I had an opportunity to demo were Meta’s new, still-unreleased, audio-only smart glasses. News of these glasses emerged not long after the company weathered accusations that it was selling “pervert glasses,” with critics alleging that its camera-equipped specs could be used for nefarious surveillance purposes. The new glasses come equipped with six microphones, but no camera, and they have no native way to record your surroundings, …

Meta Pinky-Promises Its Smart Glasses Will Be Private Soon

Meta Pinky-Promises Its Smart Glasses Will Be Private Soon

Published by skeptic

Meta knows you probably have some privacy concerns about its smart glasses. At its annual Meta Connect event today in Menlo Park, California, the company announced plans to incorporate its siloed AI processing scheme known as Private Processing into its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. The feature, designed for WhatsApp last year, allows the glasses’ AI assistant to get to know you and fulfill your requests without Meta accessing any of your data. “Most of the time, glasses are helping you see well, protecting your eyes and complementing your look, and that’s it,” Meta wrote in its press release, perhaps somewhat underselling the monumental historic significance of vision-correcting lenses as a technology. “But AI glasses have the capacity to provide superpowers like translating a conversation or summarizing notes or a conversation.” So the company says it sought to answer the question: “How do you build a hyper-personalized AI that knows your world deeply with enhanced privacy?” Private Processing is designed to enable AI cloud processing that protects data from all outside parties, including Meta itself. For …

Meta is trying VR glasses (again), this time with more IMAX

Meta is trying VR glasses (again), this time with more IMAX

Published by skeptic

Meta is renewing its quest to make virtual reality a thing. At Connect on Wednesday, the company announced Meta VR Glasses, its newest entry into the VR market. These glasses actually seem quite promising given their substantially lighter form factor and a host of new entertainment integrations — including (allegedly) IMAX compatibility. The company says that the glasses are five times lighter than the Meta Quest 3 — and they look much more like normal glasses than the bulky headsets that Meta previously released. Made of magnesium alloy, the glasses are powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Reality Elite processor. They are powered by a computing puck, which also acts as their battery. Presumably, a user can just slip the puck into their pocket, which allows the glasses to be used on the go. The glasses are largely entertainment-focused and come with micro-OLED panels built into the lenses, which provide a 5K Infinite Display with 37 pixels per degree, as well as Dolby Vision and support for Dolby Atmos audio. Users will be able to download and …

Meta VR Glasses, Ray-Ban Meta Audio, Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3: Specs, Features, Prices

Meta VR Glasses, Ray-Ban Meta Audio, Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3: Specs, Features, Prices

Published by skeptic

After months of controversy about the privacy of its smart glasses, Meta has unveiled the next iteration of its product lineup. At its Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced all the new glasses the company is putting out into the world. Its popular Meta Ray-Ban glasses are now in their third generation, but two new models steal the show: a powerful, slimmed-down version of Meta’s Quest headsets capable of virtual and augmented reality modes and a camera-free pair of Ray-Ban-branded smart glasses, called Ray-Ban Meta Audio. Meta is also bringing its Muse AI agent to its smart glasses platform. Meta VR Glasses The next evolution of Meta’s Quest VR headset is something truly different. Instead of a heavy helmet-like headset, the new Meta VR Glasses look like big goggles. They’re five times lighter than the Meta Quest 3. They sit on the nose, right in front of your face like glasses, with no headstrap needed. Meta’s VR Glasses. They look and feel more like the virtual display glasses made by companies …

Viture’s Vonder Glasses Are Meant to Map Your Mind

Viture’s Vonder Glasses Are Meant to Map Your Mind

Published by skeptic

David Jiang, cofounder and CEO of smart glasses company Viture, tells me about how he used to yell at his kid. His 10-year-old son played tennis. During tournaments, Jiang says he had a habit of shouting and criticizing his son’s mistakes as he played. He wanted to apply pressure to make him succeed—it was the way he’d been taught to raise kids, after all. It made sense. But then, unprompted, his smart glasses sent him a message. The AI assistant in his company’s newest wearable had picked up on what he was doing, recognized that his behavior wasn’t helpful, and messaged him about what he should do differently. Stop shouting. Stop criticizing. Just be there, be present, and show that you support your son. That worked, Jiang says, and being called out like that has supposedly made him a better father and improved the relationship with his kid, all thanks to his yet-to-be-released Vonder AI glasses. “I didn’t know this until Vonder could find my pattern,” Jiang says. “This is not only a tool that …

Snap tries to make the case again for its ,200 smart glasses

Snap tries to make the case again for its $2,200 smart glasses

Published by skeptic

When Snap debuted its long-awaited smart glasses, Specs, earlier this year, the reveal was not only underwhelming but also a genuine disaster. The glasses — which cost a whopping $2,200 and are vaguely reminiscent of scuba gear — inspired jeers online and calls for the company’s CEO, Evan Spiegel, to resign. The company’s stock subsequently nosedived. Since then, Snap has clearly been looking for an opportunity to explain why Specs — a heavy, expensive piece of hardware that most casual consumers will probably be unable to afford — deserves to exist. This week, the company had its chance to make that argument. At an event in Los Angeles, Spiegel and other Snap executives unveiled a variety of new features and services connected to Specs. The new updates seem clearly designed to help integrate the glasses into a broader array of digital activities and, in doing so, give Specs a clearer sense of purpose. Image Credits:Snap (screenshot) During Wednesday’s event, Spiegel shared details about a number of the new features. After a trippy promotional video that vaguely brought …

Here’s What Snap’s Expensive Specs Can Actually Do

Here’s What Snap’s Expensive Specs Can Actually Do

Published by skeptic

Snap representatives have said the Specs “do not record the world to understand it,” noting that the glasses do not use facial recognition to identify people. WIRED found code in Meta’s apps earlier this year indicating the company was experimenting with a facial recognition feature on its smart glasses, but Meta subsequently removed it. Are We Human? Snap also wants in on the AI chatbot game. At its event, the company announced a brand-new AI service called Specs Intelligence. The app releases today and will work on iPhone, Mac, and the Specs glasses. You don’t need the glasses to use the app. Snap calls Specs Intelligence an “anticipatory AI,” meaning it collects data about your day-to-day life and tries to envision what you want to do. The features will sound familiar if you’ve interacted with any AI chatbot that syncs with your calendar, email, or location info. It can help find a hotel, book travel plans, or answer questions. Snap says its AI service organizes information based on “corners” like work, family, and goals. The …

ZuckOff Is a Free App That Sees Meta Glasses Before They See You

ZuckOff Is a Free App That Sees Meta Glasses Before They See You

Published by skeptic

The free mobile app ZuckOff, built by 30-year-old Polish developer Pawel Szydlowski, uses a Bluetooth detection system to tell you whether there is a pair of smart glasses in the room with you. Since its launch in August, the app has reportedly been downloaded by more than 5,000 people on Apple’s App Store. As of writing, it has been downloaded 1,000 times on the Google Play Store. Meta’s smart glasses have endured a hefty share of scrutiny over the past few months. Unsolicited filming is a growing public safety concern, with people even wearing them to film their dates. Venues like schools and cinemas are increasingly banning their usage outright. Szydlowski recorded the Bluetooth signals broadcast by various models of smart glasses, building a digital fingerprint for each of them. He bought the hardware to compile the data that flags when a unique identifier matches up with a manufacturer identifier, catching models like Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta, and Snap Spectacles in the vicinity. A BBC investigation in January traced dozens of accounts that posted content …

‘I Felt Super Violated’: Men Wearing Meta Glasses on Dates Is an Instant Red Flag

‘I Felt Super Violated’: Men Wearing Meta Glasses on Dates Is an Instant Red Flag

Published by skeptic

Courtney McAnuff was out of a year-long relationship in the summer of 2024 and starting to date again when she agreed to grab drinks with a potential suitor. They met at a bar in midtown Manhattan. He arrived wearing a baseball cap pulled low and sported a pair of black-framed glasses, she says. As conversation flowed, from discussions about navigating life in New York to past relationships, he mentioned that his glasses were Meta Ray-Bans. “I wasn’t familiar with them,” McAnuff, a 28-year-old project manager who now lives in Toronto, tells WIRED. It was her first time seeing the smart glasses up close, which can record images and video from the wearer’s viewpoint. He let her try them on and even showed her a couple of videos that he’d taken previously, she says. “That was it. We stopped talking about it after that. I figured that was the end of the use.” The next day, checking her Instagram, McAnuff noticed she’d been tagged in one of his story posts. To her surprise, it was footage …

Meta Sued Over Training Data for Its AI and Face-Recognition Systems

Meta Sued Over Training Data for Its AI and Face-Recognition Systems

Published by skeptic

A set of parents and their children in Illinois and California filed a lawsuit last week in federal court in Chicago alleging that Meta illegally used their Facebook and Instagram photos to build NameTag, an unreleased face-recognition system for its smart glasses, and to train generative AI models including Emu and Muse Image. The proposed class action alleges that Meta violated Illinois and California privacy laws by extracting biometric information from people’s photos without notice or consent. WIRED reported in June that code for NameTag had been secretly embedded in the Meta glasses AI companion app, which had been downloaded more than 50 million times. While the feature had not been enabled for users of the app, the analysis found that the system was designed to turn faces captured by the glasses into biometric signatures and compare them with so-called faceprints stored in a database on the user’s phone. That database was configured to receive updates from Meta. At the time, WIRED could not determine where the underlying faceprint data came from. The complaint alleges …