Meta's Ray-Ban Smart Glasses Can Now Offer Fashion Advice
The latest Ray-Bans already offer some limited Meta AI capabilities, such as snapping a photo using voice. But now Meta is significantly expanding the range of what its new bot can do: On Tuesday, the company announced that it’s testing a “multi-Modal” artificial intelligence feature that can recognize objects, as seen through the smart glasses, hear requests and answer relevant questions about them — from identifying foods to offering style guidance.
Outward-Facing Camera System
The key to this "early access" experience is the outward-facing camera system in the eyeglass frames. The Ray-Bans don’t pack the beefy processor chips included in, say, the latest iPhones and Pixel smartphones, so it can't do onboard computations or processing. Meta AI must send the requests and images to the company’s servers for processing before the glasses can respond. This can lead to a few seconds of lag, though the engineering team is actively working to shorten the delay.
When the user speaks an inquiry or command out loud, the device captures and transmits images of what the person sees to the company’s servers so that Meta AI can understand what the wearer is looking at and give a response relevant to the subject. It’s somewhat akin to stuffing Google Lens into a pair of Amazon’s Echo Frames.
Improvements in the Pipeline
According to Narayanan, the wait may not be long, as the team aims to deliver product-driven abilities next year. Meta AI has been spreading across the company’s device and social media portfolio, and social commerce is on track to become a billion-dollar business this year. Statista estimates that 2023 global sales across Instagram, Facebook, and other platforms will total roughly $1.3 billion by year’s end. That could balloon further in 2024, thanks to Meta’s latest partnership with Amazon.
Privacy and Development
The user’s ability to delete the AI’s history and images is part of the company’s stated privacy push — which makes sense, considering the long-standing privacy criticisms and legal complications that have dogged Meta. It’s also a priority in how the AI was developed. The tool was trained on a blend of data specifically collected by Meta or culled from its family of apps, but only when users granted permission for their data to be used this way, Narayanan told WWD.
Feedback and Testing
Naturally, as a test feature, the new Meta AI functionality isn’t perfect. But it’s still exciting for the developers behind the scenes. They’re eager to see how testers use the bot and are parsing feedback for improvements.
Early Access Program
Meta AI was introduced at Meta Connect in September, and the bot has spread to the Quest 3 headset and the Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger apps, as well as the newest Ray-Ban glasses. Early access to this latest feature will open to testers selected from a pool of U.S. users who register their interest online.
Zuckerberg’s video Instagram post highlighted the styling aspect. The CEO, presumably wearing the glasses, held up a brown shirt with multicolor stripes and said, “Hey Meta, look and tell me what pants to wear with this shirt.”
