Meta’s Ray Ban Smart Glasses Can Now Offer Fashion Advice

12 Dec 2023

The latest Ray-Bans already offer some limited Meta AI capabilities, such as snapping a photo using voice. But now Meta is significantly expanding the range of what its new bot can do: On Tuesday, the company announced that it’s testing a new “multi-modal” artificial intelligence feature that can recognize objects, as seen through the smart glasses, hear requests and answer relevant questions about them — from identifying foods to offering style guidance.

The key to this “early access” experience is the outward-facing camera system in the eyeglass frames. The Ray-Bans don’t pack the beefy processor chips included in, say, the latest iPhones and Pixel smartphones, so it can’t do onboard computations or processing. Meta AI must send the requests and images to the company’s servers for processing, before the glasses can respond. This can lead to a few seconds of lag, though the engineering team is actively working to shorten the delay.

When the user speaks an inquiry or command out loud, the device captures and transmits images of what the person sees to the company’s servers, so that Meta AI can understand what the wearer is looking at and give a response relevant to the subject. It’s somewhat akin to stuffing Google Lens into a pair of Amazon’s Echo Frames.

In a demo for WWD, the glasses were pointed at a multi-colored patterned top, and the bot was asked, “Hey Meta, look and tell me what goes with this top.” Meta AI suggested dark pants to set off the print. For black leather ankle boots with studs, the tech recommended pairing it with jeans. But it can’t specify a particular set of jeans or search for shops that sell this particular boot, as Google Lens can do. At least not yet.