Meta Ray-Ban glasses get more AI smarts while Meta introduces Orion, its very own AR glasses

The Meta and Ray-Ban partnership saw a new model launched last year and Mark Zukerberg saying recently that he expected smart glasses to become an widely-used consumer product in the future. 

The Ray-Ban Meta glasses is getting Meta AI so you can start your conversation with “Hey Meta” to ask your initial question and your follow-up questions can be asked without saying “Hey Meta” again.

The inclusion of Meta AI will allow you to record and send voice messages on WhatsApp and Messenger while your hands are full or when you can’t get to your phone easily to write out a text.

Video is also getting added to Meta AI so you’ll have access to continuous real-time help. For example, if you’re exploring a new city, you can ask Meta AI about landmarks you see as you walk or create your own walking tour hands-free. Or you can ask it to plan a meal based on what you see in the supermarket.

Meta says that the smart glasses will soon be able to translate speech in real time. When you’re talking to someone speaking Spanish, French or Italian, you’ll hear what they say in English through the glasses’ open-ear speakers. Support for more languages will be added in the future to make this feature even more useful.

Meta is also working on apps for the Ray-Ban Meta glasses.

While the apps for Spotify and Amazon Music already exist, Meta is increasing integration and functionality to allow users to use their voice to search, discover and play content on the go. You can ask it to play by song, artist, album, or audiobook. And you can get more information about the content your glasses are playing, “Hey Meta, what album is this from?” New apps from Audible and iHeart can be expected soon.

The hardware is also getting a change with a limited edition set of Shiny Transparent Wayfarer frames so you can show off the tech inside them and you can even add EssilorLuxottica’s new range of UltraTransitions GEN S lenses to your Ray-Ban Meta glasses.

And introducing Orion

But that wasn't the only smart glasses news from Connect 2024.

Meta also unveiled its Orion prototype AR glasses that according to the company has been five years in the making to take the spatial experiences afforded by VR and MR headsets and miniaturise the technology necessary to deliver those experiences in a pair of lightweight glasses.

According to Meta, Orion has the largest field of view in the smallest AR glasses form to allow use cases like multitasking, big-screen entertainment, and life-size holograms of people while still allowing you to see other people’s eyes and expressions.

Also running on Meta AI, it can understand what you’re looking at in the physical world and can help you with useful visualisations. So, you can open up your refrigerator and ask for a recipe based on what’s inside. Or video call a friend while adjusting a digital family calendar as you wash the dishes. Much like what you can do with the Ray-Ban Meta glasses.

But as we said this for now is just a prototype. Beginning at Connect and continuing throughout the year, Meta will be opening up access to the Orion product prototype for Meta employees and select external audiences so its development team can learn, iterate and build towards its consumer AR glasses product line, which the company hopes to begin shipping in the near future.

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