Meta is updating its Ray-ban smart glasses with new hands-free features, the company announced on Wednesday. Most importantly, users can now insert a picture from their smart glasses directly into 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 last photo on Instagram.” Or you can say:” Hey Meta, post a photo on Instagram “to take a new photo at the moment.
The launch of the new feature is reminiscent of the Snap Spectacles, which debuted in 2016 and allowed users to take photos and videos with their smart glasses to share them directly in their Snapchat stories.
Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses also get hands-free integrations with Amazon Music and the meditation app Calm.
Users can now stream music from Amazon Music without having to take out their phone by saying “Hey Meta, play Amazon Music.” You can also control your audio playback with touch or voice control while keeping your phone in your pocket.
To access the new hands-free calm integration, users can say “Hey Meta, play the daily rest” to make mindfulness exercises and self-care content directly accessible through their smart glasses.
In addition, Meta is expanding the number of styles available in 15 countries, including the USA, Canada, Australia and parts of Europe. The expansion includes the Skyler style in shiny chalk grey with flowing cinnamon pink lenses; Skyler in shiny black with Transitions Cerulean Blue lenses; and Headliner Low Bridge Fit in shiny black with Polar G15 lenses. The glasses are available on both the Meta and Ray-Ban websites.
The introduction of the new features will take place one month after the smart glasses have received an AI upgrade. Meta has introduced multimodal AI for the smart glasses so that users can ask questions about what they are seeing. For example, if you see a menu in French, the smart glasses could use your built-in camera and meta-AI to translate the text for you.
The idea behind the launch is to let the smart glasses act as a personal AI assistant outside of your smartphone, similar to Human’s Ai Pin.
