The iPhone put a powerful computer in your pocket. Now, Meta’s new AI-enabled glasses are putting technology on the bridge of your nose.
They’re “a game changer,” Andrew Bosworth, chief technology officer of Meta and head of its Reality Labs division, told The Post.
Early versions of Meta’s smart glasses mostly functioned by taking pictures and shooting videos. With the addition of AI, they do much more, answering questions and responding with text on one lens for Display models or via audio built into the stems on non-Display models. The latest Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) glasses start at $379 .
Paired with the Meta Neural Band ($799 with the glasses), the specs can be controlled remotely via finger movements.
All of the current models of glasses provide the ability to use the ingenuity of artificial intelligence for gleaning information about, say, a painting you are looking at in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or a conversation you’re having with someone speaking a different language.
In the latter instance, a translation of what the other person is saying appears as text on the lens that only the user can see.
“The glasses will provide real-world subtitles,” enthused Bosworth.
In the future, he imagines the glasses’ AI component getting to know you and predicting what you need before you have a chance to request it.
The glasses could sense you’re getting ready to leave the house and automatically offer advice on the weather.
Already, with a verbal prompt, a pair of Meta glasses can, for example, take the headache out finding your car in a large shopping-mall lot. It can take a photo of where you are parked and send an image to your phone as a visual reminder.
“Memory is a good one [for the future],” Bosworth said. “Imagine [the glasses] remembering where you left your keys or cell phone” — because it saw you put the items down.”
At a restaurant, the glasses could see you’re signing a check, know that you typically tip 20% and calculate the amount for you.
The glasses could even provide a boost for party-people who are bad with faces, once a few privacy issues are sorted out. If you are at a party and come across a person you vaguely recognize, the glasses could catalogue all the people you’ve met and their identities.
They could then tip you off to someone’s name and, maybe a tidbit of knowledge about them – Michael Kaplan, he works for the New York Post and wrote the fabulous book “Advantage Players.”
“It’s doable now,” Bosworth explained. “[But] legally, it’s not permissible today. I understand that people have anxiety about it … But we’re not talking about building a central face database.”
Privacy issues have already arisen from people who claim to have been surreptitiously videotaped with the glasses. They alert people that they’re recording with a blinking light in the upper-right-hand corner, but some sneaky users cover the light with tape.
However, Bosworth noted, work-arounds to mask the light will likely get one only so far at the moment. “If you cover the light up, we do our best to disable the camera,” he said.
The glasses have been endorsed by several major celebrities, including Chris Pratt, Chris Hemsworth, Kris Jenner and James Cameron.
The futuristic eye-gear looks like it could have been inspired by Arnold Schwarzenegger in “The Terminator,” which Cameron directed. But Bosworth, a friend of the Oscar-winner, denies any connection.
The specs are also likely to be popular with influencers, reporters – Page Sixers wore them to cover the Met Gala – vacationing shutterbugs and new parents who don’t want to miss a thing.
“One of our engineers caught their child’s first steps [with the glasses],” said Bosworth. “You’re never going to be ready for that.”
The glasses are also life-changing to veterans
Don Overton, who served with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and was blinded in an ordnance bunker explosion, uses the specs as a virtual personal assistant. Using voice controls they help him get dressed and navigate as he walks about.
“All the different adaptive technologies that I’ve tried in 30-plus years were never capable of giving me the levels of independence that I was able to receive with these glasses and to be able to really lighten the burden on my wife, Peggy,” Overton previously told The Post.
We’re only just beginning to see the possibilities for the technology, Bosworth believes.
“We think of [them] as empowerment, but, really, [they’re] giving every person super powers,” he said.
