Meta Glasses

[Teegate]

The photo below is my relative in Vermont and he is almost totally blind and has been since around 22. His constant companion now is an iPhone using VoiceOver. He now also uses Meta Glasses which he is wearing in the photo even though the lenses in them are useless to him and just glass. But the features of the glasses with an App called "Be My Eyes" is totally unbelievable.

He puts the glasses on and tells Meta (the glasses) to turn on and a light shows where the arrow is pointing. He then turned to my daughter and asked Meta what she saw. The phone described my daughters features and everything else that his camera was seeing. He then asked for “more detail” and it told him my daughter age, what her facial expressions were revealing, how her legs were folded, how her hair was styled, etc. And they were spot on.

But the really interesting part of this is how the "Be My Eyes" app makes his life so much easier. He puts on the glasses and tells it to call one of the million volunteers, and he then just looks in the direction he wants them to see. He can ask what is in his refrigerator, and where, what is on the floor in front of him and anything else he wants to ask. He even called one person while we were sitting there and explained that he was showing us how it worked. They spent 5 minutes talking with us from Montana.

And they now have Ray-Ban and Oakley glasses with style to them, as well as sun glasses for someone who has some eyesight and wants protection.

https://www.meta.com/ai-glasses/?srsltid=AfmBOopeYJooVoq-FqFmXXFSSw4weZGIhYaD2Qky_B91_XAZSlcXDOe-

 

[SuperChooch]

This is a fascinating use case. I have these as a pair of sunglasses. I use them when I'm running to listen to my music and I use them to take pictures and photos at my kids sporting events so I can document them but not have whip my phone out and be be taken out of the moment. They are also great for sudden unexpected pictures, like say an eagle few overhead or something. You can snap a pic or start a video much faster than you can whip your phone out to do the same. They look exactly like Ray Ban Wayfarers so they don't look like weird tech on your face. They have some AI features where you can ask Meta what you are looking at, which is sometime handy for identifying a flower or plant that you don't recognize. Overall, I'm pretty impressed with them.

 

[Boyd]

I think these are fantastic for a person with vision problems. But for regular people - sounds like a nightmare to me. Giving Meta/FaceBook that kind of intimate personal detail about literally everything you do, see and hear is just crazy. And people are finding all sorts of shady things to do with them already, like using facial recognition to scrape the web for personal information about every person they pass on the street. That is only going to get worse as technology progresses.

Of course, it's up to you, I can see the advantages that a Faustian bargain like this might offer.