Looks like every tech firm worth their salt's gotta make AI glasses, and Samsung's finally ready to throw its hat in the ring.
The company teamed up with Google and two eyewear brands, Gentle Monster and Warby Parker, to develop the Galaxy Glasses. You can take photos using the built-in cameras, answer calls, listen to music, and talk to Google's Gemini AI about whatever you're looking at through its lenses.
They're awfully similar to Meta's latest glasses that came out last month, along with many other products in this category. Samsung is hoping to offer a differentiated experience to folks who are already invested in its ecosystem: if you're wearing a Galaxy Watch, it'll recognize a hand gesture to discreetly snap a photo via the glasses' cameras. A Galaxy phone will bring all those photos into a dedicated album for easy access. The watch can also route calls to your glasses.
The glasses will run for up to 9 hours on a full charge, and the charging case can top them off seven times over. They'll run Qualcomm's Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 chip, which should deliver snappy performance when using the cameras and querying AI.
You can also get directions based on your location, have another person's speech translated in real-time, receive summaries of long incoming messages, and share what you're seeing in real life while on a video call.
Samsung unveiled two frame designs at its recent Unpacked event; more styles will become available when the glasses arrive in stores later this year. I'd expect these to cost about US$300-$400, similar to Meta's latest glasses.
It's worth noting that we've still not grappled with the range of privacy concerns that come with these wearables, which anyone can use to discreetly record video and take pictures without other people's consent. These wearables are now a favorite tool among pickup artist content creators, perverts, and pranksters.
Business Insider reported recently that Instagram will not allow surreptitiously captured video and content depicting harassment on its platform. As such, the sort of innovation that this category needs most is not better image recognition AI or more intuitive modes of input, but stronger guardrails against misuse of their recording capabilities.
Hopefully, Samsung will find ways to work toward that ahead of its intelligent eyewear launch.
Source: Samsung
