Google Is Making AI ‘Intelligent Eyewear’ With Warby Parker After Eyeing Meta’s Ray-Ban Success

Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses had been an unexpected hit, with over two million pairs sold since their October 2023 debut. Now, Google is committing to enter the location with its have model of AI glasses, in partnership with eyewear company Warby Parker.

Google announced the partnership at its I/O convention on Tuesday, committing $150 million to produce the frames with Warby Parker. The funding will be split into $75 million for product pattern and commercialization fees and an additional $75 million as an funding in Warby Parker if the glasses meet distinct unspecified collaboration targets.

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In a say, Warby Parker and Google stated that they notion to initiate extra than one wise glasses over time, with the predominant pair to initiate “after 2025.” The wise glasses will incorporate AI facets and fill each prescription and non-prescription alternate choices.

“We’re livid to work with Google to produce luminous eyewear that can toughen our day to day lives,” Warby Parker co-founder and co-CEO Neil Blumenthal stated within the press initiate. “The eyewear we put apart on and the abilities we exercise are core parts of our identity and our day-to-day journey.”

There are no necessary facets but about how a lot the wise glasses will be conscious or when precisely they can hit the market. Google stated in a weblog post that Warby Parker and Korean luxury eyewear model Gentle Monster would maybe perhaps be the preliminary companions for its wise glasses, and this can one scheme or the other work with completely different corporations admire French luxury model Kering Eyewear to present customers extra alternate choices.

^{A Google I/O attendee tries out a prototype of the Android XR glasses. Photograph by CAMILLE COHEN/AFP via Getty Photography}

Google’s Android XR lead, Shahram Izadi, first gave a are living demo of a prototype of Google wise glasses on the TED stage excellent month. The glasses explore admire a identical old pair of lightweight glasses, but near packed with a mini camera, microphones, speakers, and a coloration whine embedded within the lens. They might be able to link to Google’s Gemini AI assistant via straightforward impart commands.

At Google I/O on Tuesday, Izadi gave a extra detailed are living demo of a prototype of the glasses, showing how they’re going to also just send text messages and take footage via impart commands. The glasses precisely answered questions about objects within the outside world, admire what band became once displayed on a poster, and remembered necessary facets about what they saw, admire the title of a espresso store on a cup.

The wise glasses would maybe perhaps also translate from one language to 1 other in real-time. If two folk had been each carrying the wise glasses and one person spoke in a non-English language, completely different person’s glasses would maybe perhaps translate the phrases to English in real-time. Google markets the feature as having “subtitles for the real world.”

The wise glasses work in tandem with Android telephones and enable customers to catch admission to their apps via impart commands without touching their phone monitors.

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The glasses will be constructed on Google’s Android XR platform, which Google launched in December with Qualcomm and Samsung. The platform helps app pattern on extra than one devices, admire headsets and wise glasses.

Google also announced on Tuesday that it would deepen its AI efforts and advance AI-powered search. The tech enormous is introducing a new search option called “AI Mode” to all customers within the U.S. starting Tuesday, so that they can catch admission to an AI reply to their queries as an different of a ragged Google Search results net page.

Shares of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, had been up nearly 5% on the time of writing.