{"id":579194,"date":"2026-05-12T03:26:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T03:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/579194\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T03:26:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T03:26:13","slug":"chinas-smart-glasses-are-already-leaving-ray-bans-in-the-dust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/579194\/","title":{"rendered":"China\u2019s Smart Glasses Are Already Leaving Ray-Bans in the Dust"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meta\u2019s Ray-Ban smart glasses<\/a> might be leading the pack in America, but in China, they\u2019re starting to look a little bit behind. Arguably, the toughest competition is coming from Alibaba, which just announced an update<\/a> for its Qwen AI Glasses S1<\/a> that expands the smart glasses\u2019 AI features and widens its lead over Meta AI.<\/p>\n

The biggest addition is the inclusion of proactive AI, which is designed to surface reminders and other useful information based on factors like the weather, your location, calendar items, or, eventually, recent purchase history. That means, for example, that the Qwen AI Glasses S1 might tell you to bring an umbrella before leaving the house if rain is expected, or it might remind you to correct your posture while you\u2019re working.<\/p>\n

Alibaba even says that future updates might use information like your recent purchase history to tell you to drink water if you\u2019ve consumed too much caffeine or even assess traffic in real-time to tell you if you should leave from work early to avoid getting stuck.<\/p>\n

\"RayThe Ray-Ban Meta are arguably still the most put-together smart glasses available in the U.S. \u00a9 Raymond Wong \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n

To be honest, it feels like a lot of stuff that the Apple Watch<\/a> already does or could do, but it\u2019s still a step further than the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, which set reminders but aren\u2019t integrated with GPS, weather, or calendars in the same way.<\/p>\n

If proactive AI doesn\u2019t do it for you, Alibaba says it\u2019s also integrating other capabilities from its Qwen App, including ride-hailing, food delivery, trip planning, review searches, and movie ticket purchases. I\u2019m particularly intrigued by the ride-hailing part and food delivery features, which remind me of similar voice-based features rolled out in Amazon\u2019s Alexa+<\/a>, though cramming those features into smart glasses, as opposed to a smart speaker or an app on your phone, might make them feel more useful.<\/p>\n

How well any of these features work is still an open question since I haven\u2019t had a chance to test the Qwen AI Glasses S1 for myself, but on paper, they make a more compelling case for the \u201cAI\u201d part of AI glasses than most AI features that I\u2019ve used in Meta\u2019s Ray-Bans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meta\u2019s Ray-Ban smart glasses might be leading the pack in America, but in China, they\u2019re starting to look…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,23595,733,4308,891,170364,4572,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-579194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-alibaba","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-china","tag-ray-ban-meta","tag-smart-glasses","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}