- Meta Unveils $299 / £269 / AU$599 Smart Glasses (Meta Glasses) Designed With EssilorLuxottica
- They match the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses on virtually every feature
- They add adjustable noses and many design and color choices.
“Turns out it’s pretty easy to make glasses that don’t look good,” scoffed Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, Meta’s CTO and head of Reality Labs, shortly after unveiling a bumper crop of new Meta glasses, simply called Meta Glasses, all designed in collaboration with EssilorLuxottica.
Bosworth says the team is fighting over “every gram, every quarter of a millimeter” with the goal of bringing AI glasses to market that are ever lighter, ever more comfortable, and ever more fashionable. With this foray into manufacturing frames with a slightly less well-known brand than Ray-Ban, Meta offers the new frames: Adventurer, Fury and Starfire Kylie. [Jenner] Edition — on the market at a somewhat surprising price: $299 / £269 / AU$599 (not including prescriptions).
There’s no one size or style when it comes to glasses, Ankit Brahmbhatt, Meta’s senior product manager for AI glasses, told me as he showed me some of the new frames. There are, he added, eight colorways and 26 different style options.
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Looking at the style choices
As I looked around the room at the Manhattan event space, I spotted black, something like ivory, tortoiseshell, deep black, green, and a dark brown. Frames range from larger, almost square frames to thinner, lighter frames. In fact, many EssilorLuxottica frames are so thin and light that you might miss the hidden cameras on the front and the slightly thicker stems to accommodate components and batteries, and mistake them for normal frames.
Kylie Jenner’s cat-eye frames are particularly attractive, and surprisingly, they looked half-decent on me.
Brahmbhatt told me that Meta worked closely with Jenner to develop the design, adding signature touches like a small gem in the frame, a mirror in the case, and even Kylie Jenner’s voice in Meta AI.
Structural changes are new in Essilor Luxottica frameworks. The nose adjusts by pressing to three different positions, the stems are bendable at the ends (Bosworth noted that the wires are covered in some sort of cellulosic plastic), and the stems actually flex outward. I tried almost every style I could find and they were all quite comfortable.
One of the biggest changes, however, is the addition of a small button behind the traditional Meta AI goggle button that you can use to take a photo or start a video: This is a small Meta AI summon button, and I used it interchangeably by saying “Hey, Meta.”
An ever more efficient AI
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It’s also the first set of Meta AI glasses to feature a Meta AI system backed by the company’s more robust Muse Spark models, which offer a more conversational voice, greater context awareness, and the ability to tap into the zeitgeist by checking social media (at one point I asked Meta AI if there was any discussion online about fake food, and it confirmed that many were talking about it on social media).
I tried the new Meta AI in a few scenarios, and it perfectly identified everything I was looking at (I could hear it take a photo before scanning), launched a music playlist based on my surroundings, and translated Arabic print for me.
That all of this costs less than $299 (Ray-Ban Meta frames start at $379), and without compromising 3K video shooting quality, 12MP photos, microphones, array, or speakers, is remarkable; but we are still in our early days in the field of wearable AI.
Doing things right and securing them
The design is “very important if you want people to wear them as everyday driving glasses,” said Peter Bristol, Meta’s head of industrial design, who joined Bosworth on stage and answered a few questions from reporters.
Perhaps as a nod to the chunky, oversized appearance of AI glasses, the two explained how they made subtle changes to the designs, slimming down the frames or simply making them thinner, such as adding a chamfer along the top edge of the frames, near the brow.
Good design means less friction, which Bristol says can help drive AI adoption.
For Meta, the goal is “to reach every corner of the market,” Bosworth said, but that approach comes with risks.
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Asked about growing concerns about the privacy of these glasses (there have been reports of people wearing them to illegally photograph women and even tampering with the glasses to turn off the “I’m filming you” LED light), Bosworth acknowledged these issues, but reminded us that Meta had actually “been a pioneer in putting LEDs on glasses,” and talked about the anti-tampering technology they put in the Ray-Ban Meta AI Gen 2 glasses. But, he added, it’s “a game of cat and mouse.”
As for what the future holds, I pointed out to Bosworth and Bristol that although they now offer many styles, not everyone wears or wants to wear glasses. What about smart contacts?
“Absolutely, it’s the design team’s priority,” Bristol said, adding, “We’re thinking and trying other potential avenues, but it’s a complicated space, so glasses are at the forefront for us.”
Bosworth agreed with the premise of my question, admitting that he doesn’t wear glasses, but is happy to wear Meta AI glasses “because they’ve provided a lot of value – but I’m aware that I do.”
“The design team is absolutely captivated by this question. What are other ways we can provide this capability to people who don’t wear glasses?
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