{"id":253787,"date":"2025-10-31T18:50:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T18:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/253787\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T18:50:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T18:50:13","slug":"ai-in-smart-glasses-is-missing-the-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/253787\/","title":{"rendered":"AI In Smart Glasses Is Missing the Point"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve used the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 1<\/a> and Gen 2<\/a> a lot over the last couple of years. One of my favorite things is the open-ear audio<\/a>, which is a game-changer for hands-free calls and listening to music while you\u2019re biking. And you know what? The cameras are okay, too, if you\u2019re not looking for anything super hi-res. It\u2019s good stuff! It\u2019s actually the opposite stuff of one of the supposedly headline features being shoehorned into Meta\u2019s description of the device\u2014AI.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the titular AI in Meta\u2019s self-described AI glasses is still the worst part about using them. As useful as I find the ability to call and message hands-free (or on display glasses<\/a>, navigation, and notifications), none of that ties into the one thing that Meta seems to think is the defining feature of these devices. Sure, voice assistants use AI, and those can be incredibly useful (if not critical) on a pair of smart glasses\u2014especially those without a screen\u2014but there are still a lot of misses there, too.<\/p>\n

Voice assistants<\/a>, in case you haven\u2019t checked up on them lately, are about the same in terms of usefulness as they were 10 years ago, which is to say, moderately helpful. Google Assistant, Alexa, and Siri have all struggled mightily to improve over the years, and while two out of those three currently have next-gen voice assistants at least semi-available to the public, the word is out on whether they\u2019re actually more helpful beyond turning our lights on and off or launching music. Meta AI,<\/a> the voice assistant inside Meta\u2019s Ray-Ban smart glasses, isn\u2019t immune to those struggles either. It gets stuff right sometimes, and other times\u2026 not so much.<\/p>\n

\"Ray\u00a9 Raymond Wong \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n

And the worst part is, the struggles of Meta AI in the voice assistant department pale in comparison to the computer vision side of things. If you\u2019re not familiar with smart glasses, let me back up for a moment; in the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 1 and 2, you can use your smart glasses\u2019 camera to ask Meta AI about your surroundings. That can be useful for stuff like translation or for low-vision people who need help reading things\u2026 if it works correctly. For everyone else and for most other scenarios, the feature can feel a bit obvious.<\/p>\n

When I\u2019m testing Meta AI and its computer vision abilities, I often struggle to come up with things to throw at it. Sometimes I\u2019ll look at an object and ask, \u201cHey Meta\u2026 what\u2019s that?\u2026\u201d Oh, it\u2019s a scooter, thank god! You saved me, Meta. Arguably worse is when you do actually think to use Meta AI and it doesn\u2019t get the job done, like the time it told me every shell I picked up at the beach was a shark\u2019s tooth.<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m singling Meta out here (in my defense, they put AI in the name of the smart glasses), but they\u2019re not alone in their emphasis on AI. Prototypes of future smart glasses shown off by Google<\/a> also lean heavily into computer vision, and even suggest a world where the camera in them is on literally all the time, watching everything you do. That sounds like the worst possible smart glasses future from a privacy standpoint. And based on Magic Leap\u2019s recent presentation<\/a>, it looks like other companies in the smart glasses game aren\u2019t trailing far behind.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not writing all of this just to rag on AI. I think smart glasses can be useful, fun, and maybe even augmentative, but it\u2019s going to take attention to detail and focus in the right direction. And sure, maybe AI can be a part of that, but there has not been evidence yet to suggest that it should be the main\u00a0part, even if Meta\u2019s naming conventions would suggest otherwise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve used the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 1 and Gen 2 a lot over the last couple of years.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[256,64,63,70107,79439,1774,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-253787","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-op-ed","12":"tag-ray-ban-meta","13":"tag-smart-glasses","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}