Meta updates Ray-Ban smart glasses with new hands-free functionality, the company was announced on Wednesday. More specifically, users can now share an image from their smart glasses directly to 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 latest photo on Instagram.” Alternatively, you can say, “Hey Meta, post a photo on Instagram” to take a new photo right now.
The launch of the new feature is reminiscent of Snap Spectacles, which debuted in 2016 and allowed users to take photos and videos with their smart glasses to share directly to their Snapchat Stories.
Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses also get hands-free integrations with Amazon Music and the Calm meditation app.
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 controls while your phone remains in your pocket.
To access the new hands-free Calm integration, users can say “Hey Meta, play the Daily Calm” to have mindfulness exercises and self-care content accessible directly through their smart glasses.
In addition, Meta is expanding the number of available styles to 15 countries, including the US, Canada, Australia and parts of Europe. The expansion features the Skyler style in bright chalk gray with gradient pink cinnamon lenses. Skyler in gloss black with Transitions Cerulean Blue lenses. and Headliner Low Bridge Fit in gloss black with Polar G15 lenses. Glasses are available on both of Meta and Ray-Ban’s websites.
The launch of the new features comes a month after the smart glasses got an AI upgrade. Meta released multimodal AI in smart glasses to enable users to ask questions about what they see. For example, if you see a menu in French, the smart glasses could use the built-in camera and Meta AI to translate the text for you.
The idea behind the launch is to allow smart glasses to act as a personal AI assistant outside of your smartphone, in a similar way to Humane’s Ai wearer.
