In our review of the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, we described the device as the best AI-powered wearable on the market right now, and it looks like Google is ready to make a comeback into the smart glasses market with its own pair of augmented reality (AR) glasses.
According to The Financial Times and The Verge, Meta is considering buying a stake in EssilorLuxottica, the eyewear maker that has partnered with Meta to produce two generations of AR-enhanced Ray-Bans.
At the same time, Google also appears to have reached out to EssilorLuxottica to launch another pair of Ray-Bans, this time with Gemini AI built in. It’s not exactly Google Glass, but it’s in the same sort of realm.
While reports say EssilorLuxottica is unlikely to cut ties with Meta and partner with Google instead, it's more evidence that Google is indeed working on a couple of AR specs and wants to push Gemini onto more hardware.
The story so far
Before merging with Essilor, Luxottica partnered with Google to create the Google Glass devices, so the two companies have a common history. It makes sense that they would want to work together again, even if Google Glass wasn't a huge success.
We’ve seen numerous signs that a new and improved version of Google Glass is on the way, including hidden code within Google’s Android app. We saw some specs briefly shown off at Google I/O 2022, but there’s been little major news since then.
In May, Magic Leap announced it was working with Google on “extended reality (XR) solutions and experiences,” but we don’t really know what that will lead to. Google is also working on XR hardware with Samsung.
At Google I/O 2024, we also saw smart specs included in a demo of Project Astra, Google's vision of how advanced AI could help improve everyday life, though no specific reference was made to specs and no official details of the device were announced.
