Meta is updating its Ray-Ban smart glasses with new hands-free functionality, the company announced Wednesday. Most notably, users can now share an image of their smart glasses directly to their Instagram story without having to take out their phone.
After taking a photo with the smart glasses, you can say, “Hey Meta, share my latest photo on Instagram.” Or you can say “Hey Meta, post a photo to Instagram” to take a new photo in the moment.
The launch of the new feature is reminiscent of Snap Spectacles, which debuted in 2016 and allowed users to capture photos and videos with their smart glasses to share directly to their Snapchat Stories.
Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses also get hands-free integrations with Amazon Music and the Calm meditation app.
Users can now stream music from Amazon Music without having to take out their phone and say “Hey Meta, play Amazon Music.” You can also control your audio playback with touch or voice commands while your phone stays in your pocket.
To access Calm’s new hands-free integration, users can say “Hey Meta, play Daily Calm” to have mindfulness exercises and self-care content accessible directly through their smart glasses.
Additionally, Meta is increasing the number of styles available in 15 countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia and parts of Europe. The expansion includes the Skyler style in Shiny Chalky Gray with Cinnamon Pink gradient lenses; Skyler in Gloss Black with Cerulean Blue Transitions lenses; and Headliner Low Bridge Fit in Gloss Black with Polar G15 lenses. The glasses are available on the Meta and Ray-Ban websites.
The launch of the new features comes a month after smart glasses received an AI upgrade. Meta has deployed multimodal AI on smart glasses to allow users to ask questions about what they see. For example, if you see a menu in French, the smart glasses could use their built-in camera and Meta AI to translate the text for you.
The idea behind the launch is to allow smart glasses to act as an AI personal assistant outside of your smartphone, in a way similar to Humane’s Ai pin.
techcrunch
