It’s a strange time to launch a new pair of smart glasses.
In recent years, Meta has been the dominant player in the resurgence of flimsy smart glasses. Unfortunately, its reputation for privacy has earned it the nickname “perverted glasses.” Smart glasses have never been more unpopular.
But last week I demoed new smart glasses from Samsung, Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Some are retro chic frames. Others have the same Y2K vibe as the Matrix movies. All were made by Samsung and feature Google’s Gemini through Android XR, Google’s platform for smart glasses and mixed reality headsets.
The AI demos are better than I expected. In one, I sit in an avant-garde art installation while creepy heads float above my head. Over the loudspeaker, words blare in French, Spanish, Korean and German. By pressing two fingers to my temple, Gemini begins to translate each language seamlessly and in real time. In another demo, a TV chef prepares a “monster pasta” recipe in Korean while people chat behind me. Music in another language plays above. This exact scenario triggered the translation capabilities of the Meta Ray-Ban Display while I was on vacation. Here, it doesn’t matter. I don’t even need to specify which languages to translate or, as with the Meta glasses, download a specific language pair to translate. I sit at another table with an English speaker, a Thai, and the glasses translate – correctly – everything they say to me in Japanese.
But I was very surprised that the glasses automatically remove faces from any photo or video to protect viewers’ privacy. I asked Gemini to identify my video director, Owen Grove. Gemini told me he knew I was looking at a person, but couldn’t identify them due to privacy. We feature a photo of our editor-in-chief, Nilay Patel. Again, Gemini said that, for privacy reasons, it could not identify a person from a photo either.
Meta’s glasses can’t do that either. But what’s striking here is that Google is actively choosing to remove facial recognition altogether.
The Warby Parker and Gentle Monster glasses feature the usual privacy LED light that turns on whenever one wishes to record visual data. As with Meta glasses, protections will be put in place to deactivate the glasses if tampering is detected. However, when I speak with Juston Payne, senior director of product management for XR at Google, he says Google intends to go much further than LED lighting.
“Someone might find a solution (to tamper with privacy LEDs) that our algorithms can’t detect, so the question becomes: So what can we do?” Payne said.
“We’re not going to target ads on it. We’re not going to train Gemini on it. Humans aren’t going to be able to use it to improve models. We’re also redacting faces before they go to the server in the first place, which then preempts some things that can obviously go wrong if you don’t take those steps proactively.”
It’s not just faces that will be redacted. Payne tells me that ambient noise – like spectator conversations – will also be removed. The glasses will only process audio from the glasses wearer using beamforming microphones. Access to the camera and mic will also require membership permissions.
On their own, these are a bold departure from Meta’s approach to smart glasses. Locally removing faces and ambient audio, for example, is a conscious choice to give up a valuable source of training data. Google could leave it at that, and Android XR would already have a head start in the privacy discussion. But Payne says Google plans to use its entire platform to discourage glassholes.
For example, YouTube will crack down on all scary videos that feature harassment or unwanted sexualization, regardless of how they are captured. Google Shopping and Google Ads do not allow the sale or advertising of accessories such as lens covers for privacy LED lights. Google Play policies will prohibit third-party apps from enabling social media live streaming, real-time facial ID, or changing anything about how the LED light works. Payne also says that third-party apps requiring access to a camera or mic’s API will need to be examined in more detail to prove they are being used responsibly. This is less of a concern at the moment, but it’s a forward-looking position for other Android XR devices or even with devices like Xreal’s Aura glasses.
It is difficult to assess the effectiveness of this privacy policy among the public. We will have to see how it is received. This is much broader than Meta’s more reactive approach so far. Granted, Meta doesn’t have its own app store or a computing platform like Android. This further highlights how Meta could have done more all along.
The one area where Meta has really succeeded with smart glasses is style. The company, through its partnership with EssilorLuxottica, offers more than 100 frame and lens combinations. Samsung’s partnerships with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster aren’t too shabby to look at. Warby Parker offers three models and three colors: green, brown and black. Gentle Monster offers six frames, including two very year 2000, with bolder designs, colors and tinted lens options. The Warby Parker collection starts at $395, while Gentle Monster starts at $449.
Style-wise, I found both collections to be attractive. Warby Parker felt a little more everyday, while Gentle Monster felt a little more editorial and runway-ready. Most people should be able to find a look that suits their needs.
The glasses are quite light (for smart glasses) at 41g. Battery life is rated at around nine hours, while the cases support up to seven additional charges. The sound quality is pretty good and the 12 MP ultra-wide camera takes decent photos and videos with image stabilization. So, rejoice! Your accidental Dutch angle photos will be straightened.
Where Android XR excels is that Gemini on glasses is, so far, outperforming Meta AI on Ray-Bans. I was able to view an event flyer for a concert in Mumbai, ask Gemini to add the details to Google Calendar, and then search for flight details to India. He gave me step-by-step walking directions while showing me the Whitney Museum’s calendar of events. Starting a live translation doesn’t require me to download a specific language pair to my phone like with Ray-Bans. I was also surprised to see Gemini occasionally correct itself in real time when it made a mistake, or ask me to get a different view of an object I was trying to identify so it could provide a more accurate answer.
Visually impaired and blind users are not left out either. The glasses feature Google’s Guided Vision, which provides conversational audio descriptions of environments and surroundings. Android XR also collaborates with Aira, which allows users to stream what they see using the camera to a human interpreter in real time. At launch, this particular feature will be reserved for Android users, but otherwise the glasses will work regardless of your phone.
Leaving it to me, it has never been clearer that technology is not currently the problem with smart glasses. Whether this form factor takes off or not will depend on culture, privacy, and utility. And on that front, this space is a bit stagnant because Meta has been the one big player setting the tone and pushing the conversation. The Android XR approach is noticeably different and serious competition for Meta is great for consumers. All that remains to be seen is which approach will prevail.
You can pre-order the Gentle Monster and Warby Parker smart glasses starting today, and the devices are expected to ship starting December 10.
Gn tech
