Meta just announced three new features are rolling out to its Ray-Ban smart glasses: live AI, live translations, and Shazam. Both live AI and live translation are limited to members of Meta’s Early Access Program, while Shazam support is available for all users in the US and Canada.
Both live AI and live translation were first teased at Meta Connect 2024 earlier this year. Live AI allows you to naturally converse with Meta’s AI assistant while it continuously views your surroundings. For example, if you’re perusing the produce section at a grocery store, you’ll theoretically be able to ask Meta’s AI to suggest some recipes based on the ingredients you’re looking at. Meta says users will be able to use the live AI feature for roughly 30 minutes at a time on a full charge.
Meanwhile, live translation allows the glasses to translate speech in real-time between English and Spanish, French, or Italian. You can choose to either hear translations through the glasses themselves, or view transcripts on your phone. You do have to download language pairs beforehand, as well as specify what language you speak versus what your conversation partner speaks.
Shazam support is a bit more straightforward. All you have to do is to prompt the Meta AI when you hear a song, and it should be able to tell you what you’re listening to. You can watch Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg demo it in this Instagram reel.
If you don’t see the features yet, check to make sure your glasses are running the v11 software and that you’re also running v196 of the Meta View app. If you’re not already in the Early Access Program, you can apply via this website.
The updates come just as Big Tech is pushing AI assistants as the raison d’etre for smart glasses. Just last week, Google announced Android XR, a new OS for smart glasses, and specifically positioned its Gemini AI assistant as the killer app. Meanwhile, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth just posted a blog opining that “2024 was the year AI glasses hit their stride.” In it, Bosworth also asserts that smart glasses may be the best possible form factor for a “truly AI-native device” and the first hardware category to be “completely defined by AI from the beginning.”