Earlier this week Bloomberg announced that Apple will “accelerate” the development of three upcoming wearables with artificial intelligence: smart glasses, a pendant and AirPods with cameras. All three of these products are meant to integrate Siri more deeply into our daily lives, and I’ll focus on the glasses aspect of it.
It’s clear that Apple has always had ambitions to make glasses. The idea of Apple making AR glasses has been around for ages. It’s on hold for now – and Vision Pro will have to do it. Meanwhile, the company is pursuing artificial intelligence glasses, similar to the Meta Ray-Bans.
Meta Ray-Bans have been a hit since they launched in late 2023. Despite everyone knowing that Meta was a privacy-invading company, many people were excited to have Meta camera glasses. At their core, they have cameras, microphones and speakers – allowing users to talk to Meta AI about their surroundings, listen to music or take photos and videos.
Since last year, we started hearing that Apple is working on releasing its own version of the Meta Ray-Bans in the coming year. Now the development has advanced significantly.
Apple is said to integrate two camera lenses: one for computer vision and one for taking photos and videos. The company also figured out how to build all the components into the frame when it originally planned to rely on an external battery.
Apple has a new trick up its sleeve
When we talk about products that rely on voice to communicate, it’s always been easy to think about how it might not always be practical to communicate out loud. This is why I largely don’t use any of the voice assistant features on my Meta Ray-Bans.
But recently, Apple acquired a new startup for $2 billion: Q.ai.
While we don’t know much about this company, we do know one thing for sure – it specializes in machine learning systems for interpreting silent voice input.
Right now, if you want to talk to a voice assistant, it has to be pretty audible. Even a whisper can be difficult for certain voice models at times, especially when you’re not in a completely silent environment. This new acquisition could solve that.
Q.ai has also researched systems for interpreting facial micro-movements that allow them to understand speech without it being audible at all.
If all of this comes together, I think Apple Glasses will be incredibly appealing to a lot of people and may make people take voice assistants more seriously.
Wrap
Ultimately, I’m sure the Meta Ray-Bans will end up being a lot cheaper than Apple’s AI glasses. However, if Apple can actually land a new level of speech recognition technology, I think many people will be willing to overlook the price difference. While we don’t know a specific release date, it seems likely that they will be released within the next year or so.
What do you think of Apple’s AI glasses? Are you looking forward to them or will you skip them? Let us know in the comments.
My favorite Apple accessory recommendations:
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