The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are an interesting gadget. They started out very low key, with the ability to listen to audio, as well as take photos and videos, but also with most of the "smart" features missing.
But Meta has slowly been adding more features to the mix, and now we've reached a point in which the Ray-Ban Metas truly deserve the "smart" moniker.
On Monday, Meta announced several new features for Ray-Ban Meta glasses.
One, currently enabled only for members of Meta's Early Access program, is live AI. It enables Meta's AI to see what you see (through the glasses' camera) and chat with you about your surroundings. For example, you could ask the AI what next to add to a cake you're baking, or how to improve your houseplant's health.
Also available to Early Access program members is live translation, which is one of the coolest use cases for a gadget like this. If you're chatting with someone in a foreign language (English, Spanish, French, and Italian are supported) you can have the glasses translate what the other person is saying and feed the translation to the glasses' speakers, or as a transcript on your phone.
Another new feature, available to all users from the U.S. and Canada, is Shazam integration. When there's music playing near you, you can say, "Hey Meta, what is this song?" and Shazam will find out the answer for you. Takes some of the fun out for music nerds like me, but it sounds like a pretty natural and elegant way to use Shazam.
Meta says more software updates (including some surprises) are coming in 2025.
