The Ray-Ban Meta glasses are the best way to secretly snap the world around you without shuffling for the phone in your pocket. But Meta wants its glasses to be legitimized as more than just an accessory with solid camera capabilities for documenting the day-to-day. It wants you to consider those glasses as your gateway to AI interaction. Those stylish sunglasses could also be the digital assistant in your ear.
Unfortunately, that still seems like a world away compared to where the Ray-Ban Meta glasses are currently. At Meta Connect, the company announced several new AI-enhanced features for the Ray-Ban glasses. The ones I got to try during a demonstration include features like reminders, which let you ask Meta AI to remind you of things, and the ability to scan QR codes. I didn’t use what Meta won’t release until later this year. That includes the ability for Meta AI to help you translate live language for English, French, Italian, and Spanish. It’s a bummer that those features aren’t available yet, as they’re the most assistant-like and could truly show the potential of Meta AI.
The author is wearing a pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses.
After I asked it to, the Ray-Ban Meta glasses reminded me that bread was in the oven. Granted, I had to set a time for it to remind me. I initially requested it to remind me about the bread when I got to a particular place, but the Meta AI clapped back that it couldn’t tap into location data quite yet—again, a missed opportunity for a decidedly assistant-like feature.
You can recall reminders you’ve left yourself as breadcrumbs for information. One example offered to me was asking Meta AI to remember where you parked in the garage at the airport. It can then recall that information when you ask it to fetch for it. But wouldn’t it be better if you didn’t have to ask it? Reminders are the kind of feature that would benefit from location data, something that Google and Apple’s AI can already do. While it’s nice that it’s baked into this specific set of glasses, it has to do more soon.
Meta AI is helpful on the Ray-Ban smart glasses, but only to a certain degree.
At the very least, the Ray-Ban Meta glasses can help translate signs in other languages and scan QR codes to load the link on your phone. They also sound good when music is bellowing from the frames. As part of its batch of Meta Connect announcements, the glasses now work with Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible, and iHeart Radio. I listened to Joost, my Europapa, from Spotify to hear how a bass-heavy song sounds on the Meta glasses. The bass wasn’t there, but the vibe was. If Meta can deliver a more sophisticated AI, that will undoubtedly help the vibes.
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