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As the battle for AI dominance heats up, Big Tech is coming for your face.
A number of companies are going all-in on artificial intelligence-enabled glasses, banking that consumers are ready for a new generation of smart devices with convenient, hands-free features.
Since launching in 2021, Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses have dominated the market, with a “performance” version by Oakley rolled out this summer. A new, pricier model, with a display screen, is said to be launching next month.
They’re not the only ones ramping up AI-enabled eyewear.
Google has partnered with Warby Parker for their upcoming Android XR glasses, while Chinese tech giants Alibaba and Xiaomi each revealed pairs last month. Apple has been rumoured to have a set in the works, and Snap recently announced its forthcoming AI-enabled augmented reality Specs.
The wearables can be used to translate languages in real time, shoot hands-free video, or identify objects around you. You can ask an AI assistant to answer questions, set a reminder or offer a restaurant recommendation — things your smartphone can tackle, but all while looking like typical eyewear.
Consumer appetite for AI
For those who’ve grown increasingly comfortable with using AI tools every day, they essentially offer a convenient new contact point — literally before your eyes.
“Frankly, we’re realizing that people have had their head in their phone many hours of the day, and looking for other ways to have computing that’s less obtrusive,” said Joelle Pineau, a professor of computer science at McGill and former vice-president of AI research at Meta who now works with the Canadian AI firm Cohere.
Glasses are a “natural” choice, she said, as “a large percentage of the population already wears glasses.”
The CBC’s Nora Young walks through how Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses work, from playing music to taking a video.
In February, Ray-Ban’s parent company announced they’ve sold two million pairs of the Meta glasses since late 2023, and are aiming to produce 10 million units annually by the end of 2026.
One analysis, by the San Francisco-based Grand View Research, says the global smart glasses market was valued at an estimated $1.9 billion US in 2024, and is projected to reach $8.2 billion US by 2030.
Privacy and data concerns
The lingering question is whether consumers will buy in en masse, especially since AI-enabled glasses raise significant privacy and social acceptance concerns, potentially affecting people beyond the wearer.
There have been some troubling signs of inappropriate use, such as surreptitiously filming people on the street.
During the recent trial of hockey players in London, the judge temporarily barred a man from attending because he was wearing smart glasses in the courtroom, where filming isn’t permitted. Last fall, two Harvard engineering students demonstrated they could modify Meta’s glasses in order to identify a stranger.
And the FBI said the man behind the deadly New Year’s Day truck attack in New Orleans wore Meta glasses to record video and allegedly scope out the area in advance.
Meta’s glasses, for one, do have a small light that blinks while a video is being taken, but someone unfamiliar with the tech might not even be aware of it. A YouTube search also turns up many tutorials on how to conceal it.
There’s also the question of what kind of data the glasses may access and keep. Last spring, Meta updated their privacy policy for voice services on their wearables, and users’ voice interactions are now stored to improve its machine learning.
“Text transcripts and audio recordings of your voice interactions are stored by default to help improve Meta’s products,” reads the updated privacy notice. You can manually delete individual interactions, but there’s no way to simply opt out.
There’s also the question of aesthetic; Google Glass famously flopped in 2014, with criticisms centred on privacy concerns, cost — and an overly futuristic design.
And virtual- and mixed reality headsets have been used for years in gaming, but haven’t found broad acceptance.
The key to gaining consumer approval may be in giving users control over what they’re comfortable with, said Pineau.
She points out that while some people have “a very high tolerance” around personal information shared with algorithms, “others have a very different sort of preference and tolerance for these kinds of behaviours.”
“So ideally, we provide a lot of control for the users to be able to make those choices,” Pineau said. “The tricky part is right now, the interface to a lot of these controls is pretty complicated.”
The AI race and investor dollars
The move toward glasses comes as the AI space faces a period of intense competition, with tech companies scrambling for investment dollars and speculation that we’re in the midst of an AI “bubble.”
“Right now, if you’re not talking about AI, the market is not rewarding you,” said longtime tech writer Om Malik.
In a July earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pointed to smart glasses as key to his company’s future vision for AI, saying the wearables will eventually be “our main computing devices” — a suggestion they could eventually replace our cellphones.
“I continue to think that glasses are basically going to be the ideal form factor for AI, because you can let an AI see what you see throughout the day, hear what you hear, talk to you,” he said.
Zuckerberg then went on to compare the future use of AI glasses to the mundane use of contact lenses today.
“If I didn’t have my vision corrected, I’d be sort of at a cognitive disadvantage going through the world,” he said. “And I think in the future, if you don’t have glasses that have AI, or some way to interact with AI, I think you’re kinda similar. We’d probably be at a … pretty significant cognitive disadvantage compared to other people.”
If AI is woven more closely into our devices in future, we may develop more of an appetite for always-available AI, said Pineau.
“If you have [AI] agents that have access to your visual world, not just your digital world, you’re opening up new ability for the agents to be proactive about finding ways to help you,” she said.
There are already signs that AI will be increasingly integrated into more of our devices, beyond glasses. Google, for example, plans on bringing its Gemini AI to its smartwatch and Google TV.
“Pretty much every device will have intelligence built into it,” said Malik.
Others question whether an AI-glasses strategy is truly a vision.
David Karpf is associate professor of media and public affairs at The George Washington University who has written about Meta’s AI vision — which it brands “personal superintelligence” — and glasses.
Meta and other big tech companies are “viewing generative AI as a race, and they all want to be the one who wins it,” he said.
But Karpf questions the link between that race and the push toward glasses.
“So they’ve got those goggles, or the glasses, and they’re hoping that they can use them for something,” Karpf said.
“It seems more like [Zuckerberg’s] spending all the money and then just kind of saying, ‘The future of AI is gonna bend toward our existing comparative advantages.'”
