If there’s one thing that’s clear from this year’s Meta Connect, it’s that the social media giant is fully committed to its burgeoning line of smart glasses.
In fact, glasses were on display almost everywhere at Meta’s annual event where it shows off its latest hardware and AI products. Both Meta’s staff and the swarm of influencers who frequent the event appeared to arrive with their glasses glued to their faces. Most of the demos the company offered this week also involved glasses.
I quickly joined the bespectacled crowd trying on Meta’s high-tech specs.
One of the most notable products I had a chance to demo was Meta’s new, yet-to-be-released, audio-only smart glasses. News of the glasses comes just after the company weathered accusations that it was selling “pervert glasses,” with critics claiming that the company’s camera-equipped versions could be used for nefarious surveillance purposes.
The new glasses are equipped with six microphones, but no cameras and no native way to record your surroundings. This should go a long way in alleviating privacy concerns. They were significantly lighter than other smart glasses I’ve worn and extremely comfortable.
The Meta staff I spoke to emphasized the entertainment and communication options of the glasses. You can easily listen to music (more comfortable than earphones) and make calls without reaching for your phone.
The glasses also integrate with Muse, Meta’s personal agent system that can perform tasks on your behalf. This new integration feature is not yet available to the public, but it allows the wearer to speak to the muse and give verbal commands. Meta also plans to personalize agents, allowing users to choose from a variety of cute digital avatars to represent them when communicating with them.
I was given the opportunity to try this too, and while it was fun, it was also a bit comical. You must speak openly with your agent and cannot speak to anyone else at the same time. Otherwise it will be confusing. The problem was that I kept chatting intermittently with the Meta staff member who gave me the glasses, and the agent thought I was talking to a Meta staff member, so she ended up talking to me.
Still, it’s easy to see how this new integration could be extremely useful under the right circumstances. If you don’t mind being seen talking into your sunglasses in public, you can ask Muse to do a variety of digital tasks for you, like sending an email or reciting your to-do list, and it will handle them while you’re out shopping for groceries or grabbing a beer. You can also ask the glasses anything and they’ll spit out the answers, like a mobile version of ChatGPT. (I asked the glasses questions about World War II, and they gave concise and historically accurate answers.)
Finally, I also got to test drive a second pair of audio-specific glasses, Meta’s new glasses for the hearing impaired. Considering that many families are affected by hearing loss (approximately 50 million Americans are said to have some degree of hearing loss), this device serves a clear and practical purpose unlike many other modern technology devices.
I spoke briefly with a member of Meta’s research team, who said the glasses have been in development for about five years, and he pointed out the price difference that could make the hearing aids attractive. Glasses retail for $150, while most hearing aids cost $1,600.
The experience of wearing these glasses was interesting. Meta instructed me to wear earplugs before trying them on to simulate the hearing loss that the glasses are intended to help users overcome. When I wore the glasses, the voice of the person speaking seemed to be amplified. Users can switch the amplification from focused, which focuses on the person in front of them, to omnidirectional, which picks up sound from everything around them, depending on how they want to experience their surroundings.
Mark Zuckerberg has made it clear that he believes smart glasses are the future, and it’s clear that his company is doing its best to make that vision a reality. However, smart glasses remain a niche market and have yet to gain a real foothold. What was most obvious with Connect was that Meta is trying to succeed where others have failed, casting a very wide net and making its glasses stylish, functional, and most of all, convenient.
Is this the future? Not surprisingly, everyone at Connect seemed to think so. I think we need to see if the rest of the world follows suit.
If you make a purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This does not affect editorial independence.
