Two former Harvard students are launching a pair of \u201calways-on\u201d AI-powered smart glasses that listen to, record, and transcribe every conversation and then display relevant information to the wearer in real time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOur goal is to make glasses that make you super intelligent the moment you put them on,\u201d said AnhPhu Nguyen, co-founder of Halo<\/a>, a startup that\u2019s developing the technology.\u00a0<\/p>\n Or, as his co-founder Caine Ardayfio put it, the glasses \u201cgive you infinite memory.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe AI listens to every conversation you have and uses that knowledge to tell you what to say\u00a0\u2026 kinda like IRL Cluely,\u201d Ardayfio told TechCrunch, referring to the startup that claims to help users \u201ccheat\u201d on everything<\/a> from job interviews to school exams.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf somebody says a complex word or asks you a question, like, \u2018What\u2019s 37 to the third power?\u2019 or something like that, then it\u2019ll pop up on the glasses,\u201d Ardayfio added.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ardayfio and Nguyen have raised $1 million to develop the glasses, led by Pillar VC, with support from Soma Capital, Village Global, and Morningside Venture. The glasses will be priced at $249 and will be available for preorder starting Wednesday. Ardayfio called the glasses \u201cthe first real step towards vibe thinking.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The two Ivy League dropouts, who have since moved into their own version of the Hacker Hostel<\/a> in the San Francisco Bay Area, recently caused a stir after developing a facial-recognition app for Meta\u2019s smart Ray-Ban glasses to prove that the tech could be used to dox people<\/a>. As a potential early competitor to Meta\u2019s smart glasses, Ardayfio said Meta, given its history of security and privacy scandals, had to rein in its product in ways that Halo can ultimately capitalize on.<\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco \u201cMeta doesn\u2019t have a great reputation for caring about user privacy, and for them to release something that\u2019s always there with you \u2014 which obviously brings a ton of utility \u2014 is just a huge reputational risk for them that they probably won\u2019t take before a startup does it at scale first,\u201d Nguyen added.\u00a0<\/p>\n And while Nguyen has a point, users may not yet have a good reason to trust the technology of a couple of college-aged students purporting to send people out into the world with covert recording equipment.<\/p>\n While Meta\u2019s glasses have an indicator light when their cameras and microphones are watching and listening as a mechanism to warn others that they are being recorded, Ardayfio said that the Halo glasses, dubbed Halo X, do not have an external indicator to warn people of their customers\u2019 recording.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the hardware we\u2019re making, we want it to be discreet, like normal glasses,\u201d said Ardayfio, who added that the glasses record every word, transcribe it, and then delete the audio file.\u00a0<\/p>\n Privacy advocates are warning about the normalization of covert recording devices in public.<\/p>\n \u201cSmall and discreet recording devices are not new,\u201d Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told TechCrunch.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn some ways, this sounds like a variation on the microphone spy pen,\u201d said Galperin. \u201cBut I think that normalizing the use of an always-on recording device, which in many circumstances would require the user to get the consent of everyone within recording distance, eats away at the expectation of privacy we have for our conversations in all kinds of spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n There are several states in the U.S.<\/a> that make it illegal to covertly record conversations without the other persons\u2019 consent. Ardayfio said they are aware of this but that it is up to their customer to obtain consent before using the glasses.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe trust our users to get consent if they are in a two-party consent state,\u201d said Ardayfio, referring to the laws of a dozen U.S. states that require the consent of all recorded parties.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI would also be very concerned about where the recorded data is being kept, how it is being stored, and who has access to it,\u201d Galperin added.<\/p>\n Ardayfio said Halo relies on Soniox<\/a> for audio transcription, which claims to never store\u00a0recordings. Nguyen claimed when the finished product is released to customers, it will be end-to-end encrypted but provided no evidence of how this would work. He also noted that Halo is aiming to get SOC 2 compliance, which means it has been independently audited and demonstrates adequate protection of customer data. A date for the completed SOC 2 compliance was not provided.<\/p>\n Still, the two students are not new to privacy-invasive controversial projects.\u00a0<\/p>\n While still at Harvard last year, Ardayfio and Nguyen developed I-XRAY<\/a>, a demo project that added facial-recognition capabilities to the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, demonstrating how easily the tech could be bolted onto a device not meant to identify people.<\/p>\n The duo never released the code behind I-XRAY, but they did test the glasses on random passersby without consent<\/a>. In a demo video, Ardayfio showed the glasses detecting faces and pulling up personal information of strangers within seconds. The video featured reactions of people who were doxed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 27-29, 2025\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n