A University of Auckland student was also caught wearing smart glasses in a test.
But Pic Picot, the founder of Pic’s Peanut Butter, told Morning Report he purchased a pair of AI glasses a year and a half ago in Australia and it was life-changing.
Pic Picot.
“Immediately, I could say, ‘what am I looking at?’ It would say, ‘you’re in a shop, there’s a woman standing there and there’s a rack of glasses behind her’,” he said.
“I went outside into the mall and all these shops that I’d walked past, I had no idea what they are … I was able to read the shop signs; I was able to go into a store and read the prices on clothes and find my size of pants.
“It was amazing … I could read the menu back in the hotel. It allowed me to do things I had never really been able to do before. I could use my phone to take a photo, enlarge it, zoom in, select the text and have it read aloud, but this was different. Suddenly, it felt like I could read again.”
Picot said it was “one of the greatest bits of tech” he had ever seen.
He said he had previously tried using a big camera that clipped on to his glasses, which he described as “hideous”.
The latest generation of smart glasses include Meta’s Ray-Ban and Oakley.
Picot said the glasses were transformative for visually impaired people.
“For everyone who has trouble seeing, it’ll be like being able to see again and it’s a life-changer,” he said.
Picot said the glasses even identified the environment for him, such as tree varieties.
He said it was a “great time to be blind”.
However, Picot said it was terrifying to think what others might think of the glasses.
“If I put these things on, and people say, ‘oh, there’s a guy with those glasses, beat him up, kick him in the ditch’ and all that sort of thing and it becomes, it’s a really worrying thought,” he said.
“But all the talk about them seems to have focused on this. We’ve got cameras everywhere these days. You’ve got cameras this side, you have cameras fitted to our clothes, the police have got them on their clothes. You’re not giving permission for all these cameras to take pictures of you.
“I’m not taking pictures; I’m just looking like people do with their eyes.”