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- [00:00]
A
What does the future AI device or devices look like? Let's talk about it with the head of wearables at Meta right after this. I'm just back from ServiceNow's knowledge 2026 in Las Vegas and the conversations I had there are ones you're going to want to hear. I sat down with their President and CPO Amit Zaveri on the platform strategy powering enterprise AI Chief People and AI Enablement Officer Jackie Canney and Chief Digital Information Officer Kelly romack on what AI really means for the workforce, the technical leaders behind ServiceNow's Nvidia partnership on shipping AI at scale and Ulta Beauty on deploying ServiceNow's technology across 1300 stores. If you want to know where enterprise AI is actually headed, not the hype, but the real story, you can find these videos on my YouTube channel. Search Alex Kantrowitz on YouTube. Depending on who you ask, between 80 and 95% of enterprise AI projects fail to get AI to work for you. You don't need more tokens. You need better people. A board pairs powerful proprietary tools with senior engineers who've seen it means your project doesn't stall, doesn't drift and doesn't fall. It ships. Whether you're a startup that needs to get to market or an enterprise with complex legacy challenges, Aboard delivers exactly what your business needs Fast Aboard is your partner for AI transformation. Visit aboard.com and let's build something together. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool headed and nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. We have a great show for you today. We're going to talk about what the future of AI device or AI devices will be looks like with the person who's been running the effort at Meta, Alex Himmel. Alex, welcome to the show.
- [01:38]
B
Hey, thanks for having me. Always great to meet someone else named Alex. Very excited to be here.
- [01:42]
A
Well, it's great to have you here. We're going to talk about the new models, especially the Ray Ban Meta Optics which I have in my hand here and if you're on audio, we'll talk about the products that we're holding. These are slimmer models that are meant to be used indoors or can be used indoors in a way that the others haven't been. And it really opens up a whole new set of use cases for these AI wearables, which is what your line of glasses are. But to begin with I just want to start broad because these glasses that have had the Meta Assistants within them have been in market for a long time. But I think folks are still trying and I personally am trying to figure out what the use case is. I mean, it's obviously great for photos and you can listen to music on them, but this broader idea of an AI device is yet to really shape, take form in a lot of our minds. So can you just begin by painting a picture for me of in the future? Maybe it's a few months or a year or a couple years down the line. How am I going to go about my daily life if this product works in a way that's different from the way that people are going about their daily lives today?
- [02:53]
B
I'll get there. But can I go backwards first a little bit of how we got there?
- [02:57]
A
No, backwards. We go forwards.
- [02:58]
B
We're only going forwards.
- [02:59]
A
Look, look, everybody wants to do a take a step back. We'll do that over the course. But I'd love to hear your perspective from the start here and then we can work our way backwards.
- [03:08]
B
I'll go forwards first. The only reason I hesitated is that I think when a lot of companies and people have tried to get in this space and say, hey, what's going to be possible with this? I think they try to jump too far into the future and ignore kind of how to get there. So I won't go that way. Let's get there in a bit. I think what you're going to see is that if you've got a pair of glasses that is already comfortable to wear, is already providing value as sunglasses or as optical glasses like we're launching with the ones I'm wearing and the ones you were just talking about, then you're gonna get more help and assistance with going about what you're trying to do during the day from your glasses, they can see what you see, they can hear what you hear. You can talk to them. Right now, I use mine a ton to ask simple lookup questions like if I'm driving and my 6 year old son is in the back just pegging me with questions, I can ask my glasses without having to take my eyes off the road and hands off the wheel and you're going to see more use cases develop as the AI is getting better insanely rapidly. And so you'll be able to do things like instead of saying what am I looking at? You'll be able to say help me do this thing that I would normally have to look up a YouTube video to walk me through or look at a reel online or you'll be able to say, hey, summarize the conversation that you and I just had to give me kind of the highlights from it. And so it'll be this proactive assistance that you can get, and it'll feel like you have an assistant that's always with you, not taking you out of the physical world, but just helping you do what you're already trying to do.
- [04:37]
A
Okay, but walk me through a day in the life of Alex Himmel wearing these glasses and having the technology be where you want it to be. You wake up in the morning, put the glasses on, and talk a little bit about the things that you're gonna do, like, give us, like, tell us a story, basically, of, like, how your life will be different wearing a pair of these.
- [04:58]
B
Yeah. I'm waking up in the morning. The first thing I do is go for a run. So I'm putting on my Oakley Meta Vanguard sunglasses. I'm wearing my Garmin watch as I'm running. The glasses are automatically taking a few videos as I go. Stitching them together is a reel. For me, that feature's already live. As I'm running, I can ask my glasses for stats for how far I've run, for updates in the training program that I'm doing that's also live and getting better. When I get back, I'm starting to make lunch for the kids to pack it for them to go to school. I notice I've run out of Ziploc bags and Nutella, and I asked my glasses to order those for me to replace them. They arrive a few hours later at my house. I'm driving the kids to school. They're asking me some questions about what they're doing after school, what time is their practice, who are they playing in their Little League game today? My glasses tell me the answer to that, so I don't need to look it up on my phone. I go to work. I'm in a series of meetings. Notes are taken on my behalf by the AI with next steps. People who own action items. That's automatically sent out to the people who were present, and we're able to follow up on those. I'm in a conversation with you. I can't remember the name of someone that I think we both mutually knew from New York, where we're both from. My glasses helped me remember what I was trying to remember in the moment. And it kind of goes from there, but you can see it's a companion. It's always with me, and it's taking the things I'm already doing and just making them a little bit easier for me.
- [06:38]
A
Okay, first of all, thank you. That was a very detailed, well detailed example of how this could change. And I think as we start thinking about the way that an AI assistant might end up helping us in life, like, these examples really help. For instance, just obviously sports has been something that we've seen wearables in for a long time now. So those of us who are like, runners, we know what the wearable world is about. I know you have a Garmin. I'll just say I've been wearing the Garmin too. And the thing I hate is having to check the watch, like looking down at the watch while I'm running, because it just, like it is an unnatural movement. And so if you could see that on the glasses, that's great. But let me challenge you for a moment on whether glasses are the right form factor.
- [07:26]
B
Sure.
- [07:27]
A
So, you know, I'm going to think through some of the use cases that you're talking about. For instance, getting updates about the run. And if you're wearing the Oakleys, well, can't you do that on headphones? And then you're working on preparing lunch. Can't you do that on, like, a smart speaker, like Alexa? And then, you know, potentially you're in a meeting, maybe your headphones is taking that as the input. And I don't think a laptop is going away. So you will see that on the laptop. So obviously, you know, we're here again. We're at Meta headquarters here in Menlo Park, California. We have a bunch of different models of glasses in front of us. They initially weren't conceived as an AI device. These were mostly for, you know, taking photos and. And videos and listening to music. And then AI came about later, and we can. So kind of a fun story about how that happened. We can talk about that. But why glasses in particular? And why not the other form factors that other companies are talking about?
- [08:24]
B
That's an invitation to take a step backwards.
- [08:26]
A
So now you can do it.
- [08:27]
B
Now I can do it.
- [08:28]
A
Not too far back.
- [08:28]
B
I won't go too far. I won't go too far back. But I think the one of my favorite analogies is that an escalator never breaks. It becomes stairs. And so similarly, the glasses, even if they run out of battery or they're just turned off, they're still something you would wear. If you wear optical glasses or you wear sunglasses, they're still providing value to you. And I think the approach that we took with glasses, which is different from what I think some other companies have taken, where it was really about how do we leapfrog forward massively with technology. It's that look, even if the glasses are doing nothing, they're Ray Bans, which is Ray Ban Wayfarers, the most popular brand and style in the world of all time. They're comfortable, they're good looking, we have a number of different colors and styles and SKUs, you can find something you like and looks good on you. Even when they're doing nothing, they're providing value. Part of the bet there and part of the thesis is this is something you'd wear anyway as you're going about your activity. You're right that I could go running with headphones. And if it's early in the morning, it's dark out, I don't want to wear sunglasses. I want to wear either nothing or clear lenses. But the Oakley Meta Vanguards here, they're not only sunglasses, which I do like to wear when it's bright out, they're also headphones. So if I want to listen to music, they are playing music for me. And so they're providing a few different pieces of value. And then on top of that I can use the AI. So that's part of the bet. And so some of the devices that you mentioned, I could put a smart speaker in my home, I could do other things, but that's a. An additional device on top of something I'd already be using. We don't think glasses are going to be the only form factor. I do think they're the most common form factor. When I think how many people do I know, kids included, who do not wear sunglasses or optical glasses. I can think of one person, literally only one that I know.
- [10:18]
A
It's that person's deal.
- [10:21]
B
They're a unique human. I'm not going to go into it. I will say they wake up and stare into the sun for 20 minutes because they think it's good for their eyes in the morning so that they're a unique person.
- [10:30]
A
Their advice on that, folks do not look directly into the sun.
- [10:33]
B
Okay? But most people do. Then when you look past that, we like to look at other form factors. When we say wearables, the way I like to think about this space is I think humans have already evolved to what works well, what form factors are comfortable to wear. And so we think that you'll kind of see popularity in that order. What are things you're already wearing and using glasses, number one. But excited about other things that people are already wearing and not very excited about ones that you don't see people using frequently. Like some of these devices that you clip on, or if you don't see a lot of people doing that already with analog versions, I think it's unlikely that you're going to see an AI version take off.
- [11:14]
A
Okay. So the fact that it's a common device, it has utility outside of the AI, means that it won't be too much of an addition to put on your body to wear, and therefore it has the best chance of winning.
- [11:26]
B
Yeah, if it's providing value outside of the AI, then the AI is going to keep getting better and providing more value as it gets better.
- [11:33]
A
So let's talk about that AI meta's in the process of developing personal superintelligence as the company describes it. And I imagine that personal superintelligence will go into these glasses. So I'd love to hear your perspective on what personal superintelligence is.
- [11:57]
B
We like to think of it as how can the AI empower you to be the best version of you? That's the way we think about it in wearables. And so we're not envisioning a world where the devices you're using or the wearables you're wearing are taking you out of the world that you're in. So how can we we talk about being present yet connected? You want to be connected, so you have tools that help you, but it's really about being present with the people you're with, the local businesses that you're in, the experience that you're in. One of the best examples is, you know, I go to my kids performances at their school and instead of holding my phone up to watch the thing they're doing through a video screen, I'm watching it through my glasses and the glasses are recording it. So it's allowing me to be more present in that moment rather than having to be removed from it just so I can have a video of it.
- [12:50]
A
Yeah, I had that experience. I was in Thailand and there was this beautiful sunset and I wanted to reach for my phone, but I remembered I had the glasses on and I just filmed it there. And I have that memory, but I was there just like living it and not looking at it through a screen, which was really nice.
- [13:08]
B
Yeah, and that's where we're going too. And I think the you can imagine stuff like that. You can imagine little ways that the AI can start to make it better. Auto capture is something that we're launching. Imagine it's the same thing, but the glasses can automatically detect that there's a moment worth capturing. You can imagine you're at a kid's birthday party. And rather than constantly having to trigger photos or videos or pull out a device, it can seize a smile, there's a birthday cake. It can capture those moments that you want to make sure you didn't miss.
- [13:39]
A
Really. But then the question is like, do you trust it really? Because that gives it the opportunity to capture images whenever you're doing anything. And there are times where even if I'm wearing those glasses, I don't necessarily want it to record.
- [13:53]
B
Yeah. So you explicitly enter a session where you say, start live capture.
- [14:00]
A
So it'll be, let's say you're at a party, then you'll say you can capture it. And it will.
- [14:05]
B
At a birthday party or sunset's coming up, or some moment where you think something's gonna happen that I wanna make sure I don't miss. I'm sure you've had some experiences where something'll happen and you're like, oh my God, I cannot believe I didn't get my phone out or my glasses out to capture that.
- [14:20]
A
Yeah, that's pretty cool. So let's talk a little bit about the history here. I think for us, we're deep into the tech world. It sort of makes sense to be wearing an AI around. But there is an argument looking at history, that there have been attempts to do it and it hasn't worked. Thinking about the Humane pin, for instance, or the Google Glass. So what do you think is different about this time?
- [14:47]
B
I mean, I think the biggest thing is that at the core, it's a good looking, comfortable, stylish pair of glasses. I mean, it's the reason we're partnering closely with Essler luxottica. They're our partner, we've been working with for years. They're the makers of Ray Ban Oakley. They have many other brands, both owned and licensed. They have a number of stores. They are experts at lenses, experts at manufacturing. And working with them is because they deeply understand what it means to have a good looking, stylish, comfortable pair of glasses that works well for people. That is the core of what we're trying to do with the glasses. And so we've launched the Ray Ban. Wayfarer was the first. Then we had other Ray Ban styles. We've launched the Oakley Meta Vanguards, which are sport, the Oakley Meta Houstons, which are lifestyle Oakleys. That's just the beginning of what we want to be a really broad selection of brands and styles and skus. We want them. Everyone's face is shaped differently, everyone has a different sense of style. And we need to make sure that they're comfortable and people like how they look at them.
- [15:52]
A
So I definitely agree with you that the way that these things have looked has been a major impediment to them. Google Glass, for instance, didn't win any fashion awards and you look at a pair of Ray Ban metas and they look nice. I would look at them at a glasses store and be like, maybe these. But the other part of it is function. What can they do for you? And I think that the lift that they would give you was never enough, even if they were stylish, to merit charging up another device and putting it on. I mean, if you think about what it takes to, I mean, this is a company that knows consumer behavior so well. What it takes to change consumer behavior is crazy.
- [16:36]
B
Right?
- [16:36]
A
People sort of get set in their ways and so. And that's the way that they operate. And if you think about them using phones, for instance, to be able to have AI functionality on your phone and then to move to start using it somewhere else, it has to be more than. It just looks a little bit good. So how do you think about creating what effectively you're trying to do is create a brand new consumer behavior?
- [17:01]
B
Well, our top use case on the glasses is audio. It's talking on the phone or it's listening to music. The thing I usually tell people is, hey, if you're going to be walking outside, which you should do, it's healthy for you. It's good to move around during the day, get some sunlight and you've got to make phone calls. This is a great product for you. It's comfortable. The audio is very loud. The mics perform better than any earbuds you could get because we've got five microphones and we have amazing noise suppression. And so if you're going to do phone calls, it's great. I was just skiing and I was going downhill at 40 miles an hour wearing my Oakley Meadow Vanguards and got a call from my friend I was trying to meet up with and had a conversation with him while I was on my way and I asked him in the middle, can you tell that I'm skiing right now? And he actually didn't realize.
- [17:50]
A
Wow.
- [17:50]
B
So it's great for those use cases or if you're on the beach throwing the football around, listen to some music. It's a great way to make the experience better. Photos and videos are the other thing. We see a lot of content shared on Instagram that otherwise wouldn't have been captured, wouldn't not be Captured. We saw some great footage from the Olympics that just happened with practice rounds. One of my good friends is a firefighter who was sending me a video yesterday from the fire truck that he was driving to the scene and rescuing someone. You're just seeing some great footage that you otherwise would miss. And then the AI is where I think you're going to see the next real trajectory of growth as people find that they're able to do things they never thought were possible and are just really convenient with their glasses.
- [18:37]
A
And so it's interesting to hear you say, okay, use case number one is the speaker. Use case number two. Photo video is the reason why AI is below that. Is it because the AI isn't good enough yet? What do you think is holding AI back? I mean, if you think about the power that people say AI has, you would imagine that it should be. Use case number one.
- [19:00]
B
The potential of AI is undoubtedly way higher than anything else right now. If you just look at the sheer rate of improvement in the industry, it's mind boggling, I think for a lot of people. For a lot of people still when they're looking at AI, it looks like a blank canvas on a wall. It's like if I handed you a piece of paper and a marker and said, all right, make me something great. Kind of don't know what to start with. And so part of what we're doing, why we start with auto capture and we'll have some other things launched shortly that are very relatable. It's just trying to give people easy to understand, easy to use things with AI and over time you'll be able to do more and more complex and advanced tasks that really take advantage of the underlying capabilities. I think people are still learning how to best use AI. I mean, it started as in general, it started as a tool to help you write things. And I think now you're seeing people are coding with it in new and crazy ways. You're starting to see agents and agentic behavior take off where you can give the AI a goal and it will go accomplish something for you while you're not actively prompting it. So I think we're seeing that progress happen quickly. And we believe that wearables will be the best form factor eventually for the AI because they're always with you. They can see what you see, they can hear what you hear, and there's something you can talk to throughout the day when you need it, and they can be proactive and they can do things that you didn't ask them to do.
- [20:33]
A
But that are helpful and it's interesting. So we talking about this new world that we seem to be heading into, where AI is agentic and doing stuff for us. The older versions of the Ray Bans, the meta Ray Bans, were mostly for outdoor use. I mean, I have a pair here, right? These are Oakleys. Great for sports. Great for sports. And actually I'd spoken with the person who ended up leading the Google Glass project, and one of his biggest regrets was actually starting it as an indoor product. Because these things are much better. People feel much better about them if you're outdoors with them, as opposed to if you're indoors with them. But that brings us to this new pair, the Ray Bay Meta Optics. They are smaller, they're lighter, the battery life runs longer. Clearly they're much more indoor than they are for outdoor use. And that just sort of opens up the aperture of what you can end up doing with this. Again, going back to this idea of this AI assistant or this personal superintelligence that's with you all the time, can you talk a little bit about the product decisions behind building a pair like this and what will it enable when you start wearing it indoors, let's say, while you're at work?
- [21:53]
B
We're very excited about the Ray Ban Meta Optics that we're launching right now. There are a number of reasons to start with sunglasses. One, which is kind of. There's a practical one, there's use case one. On the use cases, I started with, hey, talking on the telephone, taking photos and videos. A lot of those are outdoor scenarios where you're out and about, you want your hands to be free, you're talking on the phone. Sunglasses work very well there. Also, as you're trying to. A lot of what we do is take electronics and squeeze them into really tight form factors. And sunglasses tend to be a bit bigger in style than optical frames. Do you wear them for shorter periods of time, so they can be a little bit heavier. But also they just, style wise, they tend to be thicker than the optical frames that you wear all day. We've made a lot of advances in miniaturization and just optimizing where we place the electronics that we now have a smaller, lighter frame, which is the optics that we're announcing here. But that's not it. We already see when we measure engagement and retention on our glasses. So how often do you use them and then after some period of time, are you still using them actively? Those numbers are highest when we have clear lenses or transition lenses, which means that we're already seeing the behavior that people are trying to use them indoors or from outdoor to indoor. Transition means it works great where I'm outside doing something, I'm on the phone, I walk inside, the lenses go clear and I can keep doing what I'm doing. So the Ravenbed optics, they're not just so there's a lot of things to like about them. I'm wearing them here. You have. We're able to thin out the arms. The front frames are thinner. They're also a little bit flatter to be more optical friendly. The nose pads are replaceable. They come with three or four different pads that you can put in so it's the right fit on your nose. The tips are adjustable so an optician can warm these and then bend them to help make sure that they stay on your face. Well, the temples, you have overextension hinges so that they're more comfortable to put on and they squeeze against your head comfortably. So there's a lot of advances. And this is just the hardware to make sure that it's very obstacle friendly. We just had an event. The Sol Exotica has a switch event in Orlando I was at a few weeks ago where we announced this to opticians. So we expect this to be in optical channels wherever you go to buy your optical glasses. Now, your optometrist should hopefully have these glasses that they're able to help get you the right lenses for your prescription and help work for you. So we're really going all in. We think that we're seeing all these trends in the data that people want the opportunity to wear them inside as their everyday optical glasses. And we hope this is a product that people like for that.
- [24:44]
A
And then. So talk a little bit about the. I mean, we're kind of living in this open claw moment in a way where people are thinking about giving AI access to a lot of what they do to be able to take action for them. And I'm thinking again, like, if I'm at my work computer all day long and I have a pair of these optics on with my prescription, maybe there's going to be new use cases for me. So have you thought through those and how does that sort of fit into your vision of building AI wearables?
- [25:15]
B
I think there's a lot of. When you think about. So when you go from AI the way we've experienced it to agents, that leap is that instead of prompting the AI saying, write me something that does this or write code that does this, you can give it a goal and it will Figure out how to accomplish that. So you can say I'm trying to debug why I'm using coding. One, I'm a software engineer by background, so please bear with me. But I can say something like the behavior I get when the battery is low doesn't feel right. It currently says this when it's low on battery in my ear and I would like to change it to this. And the agent can go and figure out what piece of code that's defined in and how to adjust it and create a diff that you can then prepare to submit. As an engineer, the advance to openclaw is you see, you see a few things. One is that you're able to what engineers would call creating a cron job, but you're able to schedule things that happen regularly on your behalf. So for example, every day in the middle of the night right now I have. Well, every Sunday right now I have my claw go and help create a schedule for the week that I then send to our nanny which has the kids schedule each day of the week. And it does that automatically. It's scheduled, which is a new thing. And the second is the claw can figure things out that it doesn't yet know how to do. So it's able to reason through things and develop new skills that it didn't have previously. I think for wearables that creates a bunch of possibilities. I mean, you think about, I go through my day and I'm constantly writing down things that I need to remember to do later. Like you and I can have a conversation. We were just talking before this about pizza that I'd like to try in New York that your buddies open. And normally I'd write down Pizza Detroit, Pizza New York. Write down the name and plan to follow up with you on it. I could just tell Aqua, here's the follow up I plan to do and it can take care of that for me. Similarly, I can give you a number of examples that are down that line, but I think that is.
- [27:31]
A
Let's hear more. Actually, I am interested in the examples.
- [27:36]
B
For example, you'd say this weekend's an exciting weekend for me. The Yankees are in town for opening weekend, playing against the Giants are there Wednesday through Saturday. I've got tickets for Saturday. I ordered that many months ago because I'm a Yankees fan, born and raised in New York. My kids, I'm working on them being Yankees fans as well. We've organized a big thing. I have 20 tickets inviting friends and normally you'd write down remember to send an Email with the ticket details to people who are coming. But you can just tell your claw, hey, draft an email for me to these four people. Just say their names, don't say their email just to these four people with the ticket details that you can find in my email.
- [28:20]
A
And it just does it.
- [28:21]
B
And it should just be able to do that.
- [28:22]
A
And this is the way you use it.
- [28:26]
B
We're trying out a whole bunch of different tools. I certainly am. I'm using them and yeah, using that today.
- [28:32]
A
And so when your vision of. With the glasses could be instead of having to. Because I think the way that you speak with Openclaw is through WhatsApp. Most people do it through WhatsApp.
- [28:44]
B
Yeah, you can use many different chat apps, but a lot of people use WhatsApp.
- [28:48]
A
So is your thought, then again, if just. I'm trying to flesh out the product vision here. If you have a pair of glasses like this with you while you're working, which I guess is the case for you right now, you could just say something to it and then some magentic engine on the back end will be able to do these use cases for you.
- [29:09]
B
Yeah, I mean, that's a pretty good articulation of it. I mean, I think of it in two ways. One is. And it's in two directions. One is. As I'm going through my day and there's something I A lot of. It's funny how many people in tech decide that the thing that they need to invent at their next startup is like a task app to just help you track the things that you need to do. And I think instead, as things come up like, oh, shoot, I forgot to send out the email with the details for the game, or I forgot to send out a birthday invite for my kid's birthday coming up, you can just say, hey, I forgot to do that. Draft it for me and I'll look at it tonight. At some point you can say senate on my behalf. But I think we're still kind of in a draft version. I think that's one end of it. The second is, I like to describe it. Imagine if you had the perfect person sitting right next to you who will whisper in your ear at the right time. So my wife is very good at elbowing me if I'm about to say something that I'm going to regret. My wife is really, really good at letting me know that I'm about to do that.
- [30:23]
A
That's good. I'm too quick. I always just blurt it out.
- [30:25]
B
I feel bad for her. See So, I mean, this is a scenario that might work for you.
- [30:29]
A
Yeah. Oh, maybe. Okay. You're saying the glasses can be like, it don't.
- [30:33]
B
It's like, you know, I'm about to sit on regret, or I just can't think of the word. You know, I cannot think of the movie or the actor or the restaurant or the thing that I'm trying to think of. Or you have these other examples, like, how often do you have a conversation with someone like, oh, you're going to St. Louis. Let me tell you, I'll send you a thing later that has the places I'd recommend in St. Louis.
- [30:58]
A
Yes, I do that maybe 5% of the time. I promised everybody I was going to send you the name of the pizza place that I'm recommending. Nate's Detroit Pizza, Brooklyn and Manhattan. But I could have just set it to this smart thing, and then it would have sent it for me, and
- [31:15]
B
it could have sent me a WhatsApp or a text message or something that just. So then I had it. I wouldn't forget it. But if you put it out there on your podcast, I think you'll still get a lot broader distribution than the agent.
- [31:29]
A
I hope so, but you never know. But that is interesting. I mean, again with this idea of reminders. You know, I think it would be great, for instance, if I'm wearing something that is sort of paying attention to what I'm doing, and it can. You know, when I was with Boz, Andrew Bosworth, the CTO of Meta, a year and a half ago, two years ago, maybe, at this point, one of the things he talked about was these glasses can be aware of your situation. So it could potentially be something that is like an open claw functionality. But will wait until that conversation that I'm having is over and I say bye, and then it can whisper in my ear, hey, by the way, do you want me to do that thing you were saying?
- [32:14]
B
Exactly. I think a lot of us right now are feeling like we just get too many notifications as we're going through the day, whether it's your phone buzzing or your watch buzzing. And one of the things people are nervous about for good reason is that, hey, if you're wearing more wearables or ones that are even more intimate, meaning if you've got display glasses on, what you don't want is one more place to put a bunch of notifications that distract you as you're going through the day. But the potential of the wearables is that if they have context of whether or Not I'm talking at the moment or what am I saying or who am I talking to? They should be able to really intelligently filter out whether it's the right moment to deliver something or the wrong moment to right.
- [33:04]
A
You know, it's interesting because we, I mean, we're already, my wife and I are already using like smart speakers in our house to do some of this. But yeah, I think it could be interesting if it is something that's done in glasses. And you know, I think the one especially contextually aware and I think the one thing that I wonder is, you know, so much of the talk around AI is it's a level. It's going to level things up and it's, you know, sort of this revolutionary thing. And I wonder is that that revolutionary? Like, shouldn't we be expecting more of it? And maybe I'm just like perpetually dissatisfied and unappreciative of what's happening. But I'm curious what you think. Like, is that really a revolution or is that something that just helps us be a little bit more productive?
- [33:49]
B
AI in general or smart notification, more intelligence around notifications?
- [33:53]
A
I think that just the AI again that we talked about that's listening and can handle these tasks for us,
- [34:00]
B
I think it's going to be pretty revolutionary. Well, I think it'll be both. I think there'll be a number of things that each individual one is tiny. It's just a. Oh yeah, that's a small improvement. But if you add that up throughout the day or throughout the week or throughout the month, it's the sum of that will be meaningful. And then similarly, I do think there's the AI will do things for you that you're shocked it was able to do and will find pretty revolutionary. I mean, there are small things. I mean, the minute I stopped running with my phone, I go for some pretty long runs. And I do need to be able to contact other people while I'm out there because things can go sideways. Also, I'm a father and so if I need to be reachable. The day I was able to stop bringing my phone with me because I had a cellular connected watch was a pretty big thing. And I think for many people that feels like, oh, big deal, you can do phone calls on your watch now. I usually have my phone, but for me that was a major thing. But that's an example of small things that add up. I do think agentic AI is really going to be able to do a lot of things for people that will feel like it is super helpful.
- [35:13]
A
Okay, there is a question about whether the best device will work or the best AI assistant will work. And and I want to cover that when we come back right after this. This episode is brought to you by Orchestra A couple of weeks ago, I sat down with David Plouffe, two time Obama campaign manager, senior White House advisor, and now a partner at Orchestra, for a conversation about AI democracy and the massive gap between how this industry sees itself and how the rest of the country sees it. It's one of the most honest conversations I've had on this topic. You can watch the full thing on my YouTube channel. Just type in Alex Kantrel. Orchestra is a strategic communications firm helping organizations navigate exactly this moment. Check them out@ orchestraco.com Most leaders know how work is supposed to happen, but when it comes to how it actually gets done day to day across tools, teams and handoffs, they're mostly guessing. That's exactly the problem Scribe Optimize was built to solve. Trusted by over 80,000 enterprises, including nearly half of the Fortune 500, it gives leaders a live view into how work is really happening across approved business apps. Without interviews, manual process mapping, or extra effort from the team. And because it's continuously analyzing real workflow activity, the insights stay current instead of going stale the moment a process changes. You can see which workflows are happening, where time is going, and which tools are involved. It automatically surfaces top issues, explains why they're happening, and even recommends ways to fix them with estimated time, stack savings. And importantly, it's built with privacy in mind, so activities only captured in admin approved business apps and user level data is anonymized by default. The kind of visibility that used to take months. Now it's just always on. If you're ready to stop guessing and start seeing, visit Scribe how bigtech that's S C R I B E How slash bigtech Morning Brew Daily breaks down
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the biggest news in business every morning, so it fits seamlessly in your day. I'm Toby Howell.
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And I'm Neal Freyman. And each morning we cover everything from the latest tech headlines to why nobody can afford a house right now.
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You'll leave each episode of Morning Brew Daily smarter and ready to take on the world around you.
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And some people are saying it's the best part of their morning because we
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Business news doesn't have to be boring.
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Join millions of monthly listeners and check out Morning Brew Daily wherever you get your podcasts.
- [37:33]
A
And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Alex Himmel he's the VP of wearables at Meta. Alex, before the break, we were talking, talking about what will enable a company to win this AI wearable battle. Will it be the form factor? Will it be the sleekness of their device, or will it be the assistant inside? And I think we're going to have a handful of companies going after this. Obviously you guys are far out in front of people. You've had this in market for a long time. But it's no secret that OpenAI is planning not just a device, but, but a family of devices. Google has their own set of devices, Amazon has the Echo in market. And Apple may be adding some form of, maybe it's internal Apple models, maybe it's a version of Gemini into their headphones. That's just the doc. I think there's a strong argument to be made that the company that has the best assistant will be the one that takes everything. Because again, if you're trusting this with, like to be deep in your life and to be, and to be, you know, responsible for some of your activities, you're going to want to use the best option. So I'm curious if you agree with that and if you do, does that mean that Meta, to win this battle, needs to have the best AI assistant on the market?
- [38:58]
B
I think it's going to be a combination of things. I think that when we talk about wearables, I think if people don't like the device, they're not going to wear it.
- [39:09]
A
True.
- [39:10]
B
I think it needs to be comfortable, it needs to be stylish, especially if it's glasses or even watches. If you don't like the way it fits on you and what it says about you, then you're not going to wear it. Even if it's 20% better in terms of functionality than the alternative. I also think the software needs to be really amazing. And so, I mean, it's also no secret. I mean, there's a lot of the devices you mentioned were. These are rumors. I think I've heard those rumors from many places. So there's probably some credibility to them.
- [39:45]
A
Well, I will say actually OpenAI for sure is not a rumor. They are building a family of devices. Google is building these devices. Google has the, Amazon has the Echo in market. I think the only one that's rumored is Apple.
- [39:58]
B
That's a fair point. The Apple one's rumor. A number of others have been some announcements, so that's fair. I was just commenting on that. They're not actually in the market yet, so can't really react to what exactly they're doing, or pros and cons to the devices. Also pretty well known that we're investing heavily in in AI here at Meta. We've recruited quite a team. We're investing heavily in model training and other things. And I think we've got. I think our AI and our software needs to be really good. I mean, we're going to be assuming everyone enters the market. We're going to be competing with companies who have released devices with really high quality, good performance devices you can depend on every day. So our quality needs to be really good and then the AI needs to be amazing. And we've been working on it internally. I think that that's pretty well known. We're using a bunch of the new models internally, feeling pretty good about the progress we're making. I think we're going to have some really exciting things to show people in the first half of this year as we start to launch new models and new features on top of them, new features on mobile phones, but also new features and wearables that I think are going to be pretty good.
- [41:13]
A
All right, looking forward to that. I guess the point I'm making is it seems in this, more than other types of computing, it's kind of winner takes all. That might be my perspective. Like, if you're going to have an agent that you so trust with everything, you're probably going to have one. Doesn't that sound right? Like, it's like you'll have one inbox. It doesn't really work to have multiple email addresses.
- [41:40]
B
I think there's a number of reasons why I think you'd use. Why many people use one assistant more than many. I mean, one is you pay for each of them, and so you probably want to pay for fewer rather than more. Second, the more you work with it, it learns about you, the better it'll perform outside of underlying capabilities. So I do think that people will, for the most part, choose one assistant, but they may also choose one assistant for different tasks. I mean, I'm sure I'm a bit of an outlier since I'm right in the middle of the technology, but I use a bunch of different assistants and I use different ones for different things that I'm trying to do that could be point in time based on what's better at what right now, and maybe that'll consolidate as the models mature. But we are very focused on, we want our glasses to be the ones that offer people the broadest selection of brands and styles that we think people will like to wear and in making our software the best and we've been there are other devices in the market, but we have been there's going to be a lot more competition coming than I think that we've faced than we faced to date. Part of it is that a lot of people have tried to build glasses and it didn't work out at first, ourselves included. Our first launch didn't go as well as we had hoped it to. But then when others pulled back from the market, I think we doubled and tripled down. And I think when you're looking at seems like now every year or maybe more frequently than that, we're launching new hardware, it's because we've been investing heavily for many years and you're starting to see the fruits of that come to market.
- [43:24]
A
I was in here, I think 2017 or 2018 and myself and my editor we had a long conversation with Mark Zuckerberg about some tech related thing or a new launch at Facebook. Towards the end it was almost like a throwaway, but he was talking about how important it was going to be to have a computing wearable like a pair of glasses. And I was like, oh, that's a story. And we didn't end up writing it. But it just does go to show that Meta has been thinking about this for a very long time. I guess what we're seeing today, the devices that work and are good and people enjoy using, is probably like an outgrowth of the Metaverse and the Oculus work here, but also not just like let's try this. To me it seems like it's been kind of core for almost a decade here.
- [44:16]
B
That's definitely true. When we acquired Oculus, part of the logic was it wasn't Oculus. It's a virtual reality headset where you're looking at an immersive view. At the time when we acquired Oculus, part of the rationale was there was a research division led by Michael Abrash that was looking at augmented reality technologies. Augmented reality translates into glasses and wearables. And right out of the gate we started investing in the Orion prototype, which is what we showed about a year and a half ago now publicly and have continued to show. And that's been in the works for as long as Oculus has been here. And that was always part of the big vision. Mark's had incredible conviction that this is something that was going to be critical and that we were going to invest in this space. Even when a lot of invention we've been working on here, we Certainly had some highs, we had some lows where certain piece of technology didn't hit the progress that we were hoping to at various stages. Even through that, we really continued to invest even when there were reasonable times to put doubt in it. I think we're certainly glad that we did. But it really took a lot of conviction. I give a lot of credit to Mark, also to Boz for having a lot of conviction in what we were doing.
- [45:37]
A
Speaking of Baz, I was listening to you on the Boz to the Future podcast and you spoke about the ambition and to me it's pretty interesting because you talked about how I think it was the Orion glasses which have the screen in them, which are not publicly available yet, but there is a version with the screen available, the display that is available to folks to pick up. But you said when people tried on Orion it was the first time that they felt like a pair of glasses could replace a phone. And so I am curious because the big question about AI devices is is it a new category and everyone has one and the so called legacy devices or is it a replacement? So is the ambition here to replace the phone?
- [46:26]
B
I mean, I think the ambition of the phone at some point was to replace laptops and desktops and I think those certainly haven't gone away. I actually find myself using them more and more in the world of AI right now. Oh yeah, but mobile phones have taken off. I mean the number devices sold and used and I mean they're ubiquitous for all kinds of things. I think wearables should be similar. I mean we're expecting them to be ubiquitous at some point. We think that they'll be ubiquitously used by people providing a ton of value. That doesn't mean phones are going to go away, but I think you'll see wearables be used for some of the things that you do on phones today and a bunch of things that you don't use phones for today. I mean there's certain things you just wouldn't do because it's, you know, one of the crazy things is that some of the technology around being able to recognize what you're looking at has been around for quite some time on mobile phones, but you don't hold up your phone to try to make sense of the world in front of you because it's just kind of a weird behavior.
- [47:30]
A
Some people do, but some people do. It's not a normal thing to do.
- [47:32]
B
And I might be one of those people at times, but I don't see it.
- [47:35]
A
I might be guilty as well.
- [47:36]
B
Yeah, I don't see it very goodly. Whereas with a wearable, it's a pretty natural behavior and it's one of the most frequent AI use cases that we see on our glasses. Just what is it that I'm looking at? Oh, it's this building, it's this landmark, it's this type of plant. Don't eat that mushroom
- [47:52]
A
that's important. Or do eat that mushroom also.
- [47:54]
B
You shouldn't be randomly eating a mushroom that's in front of you. But we're trying to give advice where we can. And then I think the reaction that people had with Orion was because you did the demo, we show you a bunch of example things that you can do with the glasses. And I think with the really big field of view display and the ability to place content in the space in front of you, it's easy to imagine all the other things that you can do with it. We didn't show in there. Maybe this is a bad example. I'll use it anyway because of the time we're in. In the year we didn't show that you could watch March Madness basketball games on a virtual television while still in a room with other people. That was an awesome use case. Last week as the.
- [48:33]
A
You did that.
- [48:34]
B
It's pretty great. You put a browser window and you just kind of put it like if you're around me, I can put it right there and watch the tournament games. Also the wrestling tournament, the NCLA wrestling tournament was at the same time. And my alma mater, Stanford did great in that too. So that's another thing you watch.
- [48:51]
A
What is your facial recognition plans? There was a New York Times article talked about this feature called Nametag. The Times said it would let wearers of the smart glasses identify people and get information about them via Meta's artificial intelligence assistant.
- [49:07]
B
I saw the article. I'm familiar with the one that you're mentioning. I mean, it's worth noting just out of the gate, we do not have a feature that's launched that helps you. We don't have a feature called that or that. Does that feature that's launched in the glasses. It is one of the most frequently requested features from people. We hear from our blind and low vision community that they wish they knew who was in front of them, who was walking by. We hear from people who go to conferences and events. It would be great to be you're going there to meet people. It'd be nice to be able to recognize the people that you're meeting. We hear from just a number of people Just anecdotally, hey, I wish unprovoked. What I really wish these could do is help me remember the names of the people I've met before. We get a lot of asks. I don't think we're the only company that's heard that before. It's certainly been developed and prototyped by a number of companies that we've heard about. But to launch a feature like that requires being really thoughtful with how it works, making sure it's privacy first, making sure that it's not creepy, making sure that it's providing value while not making people uncomfortable. I mean, the fundamental talent of these devices, if I'm wearing them and you're uncomfortable with me wearing them, I'm probably going to stop wearing them.
- [50:34]
A
Yeah, they're not worth anything.
- [50:35]
B
Yeah. And so we've got to be really conscious of that. And with each feature that we're looking at, that's something that we're going to have to be conscious of as we go. So this is one of the things that has come up. It's one of the trickier things for privacy reasons, user comfort reasons, also some legal considerations. So it's certainly not something we take lightly and it's something that we need to think about. There are versions of that feature out in the wild right now. You see it a lot for communities, the blind, low vision community especially. You see versions of that. I think Microsoft has an app that you can use for that. Um, but I don't know. We're not. We don't have something ready to launch. We don't have something launched. It's just one of the things that we're thinking about.
- [51:22]
A
Well, first of all, I'll say this. You know, I think a year and a half ago I was at Nolan Darbo's house in Yuma, Arizona. He's the first Neuralink patient. And he's paralyzed and can use computers thanks to Neuralink. So I think that's one of the more underappreciated parts of wearables or even brain computer interface, is that the accessibility component is amazing. He's been paralyzed, was paralyzed for eight years before he was able to use that device. And then like, literally couldn't use the Internet. Could only do with voice on like an echo. And then, you know, started playing video games again. He played a video game against me and he beat me. And that's amazing. But I definitely sort of the privacy concerns, and obviously you're aware of them, I see why people would not want to live in a world where somebody can wear a device that can identify me.
- [52:18]
B
Totally understand. And I think if you end up in a place where someone you've never met before walks up to you on the street and says, hi, Alex, and asks you a question, it's weird. It's really weird. And that goes against a whole bunch of social norms, and it feels creepy. I think a lot of the features, all the features we're trying to build are taking things that are normal interactions and trying to make them a little bit easier. So the idea of a name tag is like, what is a time where you wouldn't wear a name tag and you could have a virtual version? If I were at the office right now, it would not be weird at all for a coworker to know my name because I walk around with a badge that has my name on it the whole time. And so a digital version of that would not be weird at all. It's common behavior. Similarly, where knowing someone's name is most useful is, I've met you, you've told me your name, and I just cannot remember it. It could be, it's a new meeting I'm in. We're meeting for the first time. We just went around the table with 10 people, and I got nine out of 10 in my head, and I'm missing the 10th. Or, you know, we have kids in the same class and we've met once two months ago. And I just. I know your kid's name and I cannot remember yours.
- [53:44]
A
You know, if only there was an app that would allow me to maybe add you as a friend and we could connect that way.
- [53:56]
B
This is the time the AI should help. I can think of some apps like that, but I can't remember the names of them. You might have to help me out.
- [54:00]
A
It's not meta. Okay, that's interesting. So just to conclude this part, you said not launch, but that doesn't mean it's not under development.
- [54:11]
B
It's one of the ideas that I think comes up with every company in the space. It's. It's definitely not launched. It's something that's come up a bunch. We would not rule out the idea that we have something in that space, but it would have to be really well thought out and really well done and done in a way that people felt comfortable with it. Otherwise, we wouldn't. It just wouldn't make any sense.
- [54:34]
A
So we can basically rule out this idea that I would be able to take a look at random people on the street and know their name by looking at them. By looking at Them through the glasses.
- [54:44]
B
Yeah, I just don't think that's a feature that people want or really comfortable with.
- [54:48]
A
Okay, all right, it's good to get your perspective on that. Let's talk a little bit about how this kind of changes the AI infrastructure story. It's kind of interesting because we're going to a place where we have smaller models and some of them don't have to run them in a multi billion dollar data center build out, you can just run them on device. So Meta is an interesting company because it's in the middle of doing that big build out, but it also has devices that I would imagine someday would want to run an AI model on device. Can you talk a little bit about that balance and sort of does one eventually cancel each other out or do you need both?
- [55:28]
B
Well, so the servers and data centers that companies are building out, Meta included, there's two kind of core functions that they serve. One is the training of the models. And so that certainly happens in data centers. And that's where it's going to continue to happen. And that's where a lot of the investment is going right now. And the other, as you say, it's running the inference. So it's when you're using the model, where are those models running to answer the prompts or to agentically help you with tasks? The former, I think. The model training I think is going to consistently run in data centers on where inference is served. There's a number of reasons to try to move that to devices that are not in data centers. One is the latency and reliability will be better. You've used apps on your phone and the more things are local, the less network interruptions or low bandwidth or packet loss can cause issues. That's one reason to do it. Second is cost to the user. And you're paying the fees to whatever assistant you're using right now. A lot of those fees are because it costs real money to be serving
- [56:41]
A
you and usage caps. You wouldn't have that if you used that model device.
- [56:46]
B
Yeah, and a lot of that cost goes into power right now. And if it's on your device, you're on the hook for charging your device and whatever power it runs. And so I think you're going to see there's certainly a lot of reasons. Oh, and privacy is the other obvious one. You're in control of your data. If it stays on your device. The things working in the opposite direction are smaller. Models are not as capable at certain tasks. And so the real math and evaluation to do There is for a given set of tasks, how well does the model perform in a smaller version of it that's run locally? And if it performs well, I think there's a lot of incentive to have it run locally for everyone, for the person using it, for the end user, also for the business, like us providing it. But I think you'll end up with a bit of a mix. The more complex things are going to have to run on servers or on personal devices that are larger and more capable.
- [57:48]
A
I think I want to end on the story of how this integration of AI into the Ray Ban metas came about, because initially they were not envisioned with the AI assistant inside. And then you're driving with your kids one day and what happens?
- [58:10]
B
Well, so we had the Ray Ban meta glasses. They were the second device that we were launching, the second version of Ray Bans that we were launching with Slo Exotica. And it was one of the most heavily debated devices that we were working on because it wasn't a major. The first version hadn't done as well as we had hoped. It wasn't a major technical leap from the first one. And so we're like, I don't know, is it worth doing? Or should we just go straight to the display glasses which were under development at the time, which were already. Multiple versions of them were already under development at the time. And then AI Genai large language models took off. I don't know where. I do remember it was a Saturday. I had my kid and child seat in the back seat. And I start getting a wall of text From Mark on WhatsApp which led with, hey, I think these glasses might be a great AI device. And then just like thought after thought. So, you know, as any responsible parent would do, I pull over to the side of the freeway and went back and forth with him. And by that was a Saturday, by Monday, we had pivoted 200 people on the team to be building AI for these glasses. And the rest is history. Although I think the AI gave us an idea for a vision of what the glasses could eventually be with a really high ceiling. Ironically, all the features that we weren't sure if they were a big enough technical leap turned out to be a big enough technical leap. And I think or would have given us a lot of the initial usage and traction. The audio is crossed a threshold where it's loud enough and the sound quality is good enough to be talking on the phone and listening to music, and the image quality is good enough to be sharing videos to Instagram or The app of your choosing that you feel good about and that people like to engage with.
- [59:57]
A
I just can imagine the kids in the back getting kind of restless and you being like, listen, Daddy's launching a new category of device. We're going to have to relax.
- [60:05]
B
Yeah. And fast forward two years, and here it is. The number one question in my house is when there's going to be a kid's version of the glasses.
- [60:11]
A
Really?
- [60:12]
B
Because they really want to have a pair of their dance glasses that they can wear out.
- [60:15]
A
Okay, before we leave, let's just run down the glasses that exist today. So there's the standard Ray Ban Metas. Then you have the Oakley Houston Lifestyle. There is, I believe, on your side. Here is the display glasses. That's the pair of glasses with a screen inside of them that are available for sale. How much do those cost?
- [60:37]
B
These are $7.99.
- [60:38]
A
Okay.
- [60:38]
B
That's the same including the neural band.
- [60:40]
A
And there's a band that you can use that takes your dural pulses to be able to control the screen. And then there are these Ray Ban meta optics, which are lighter, and they're coming out April 16th.
- [60:55]
B
We're announcing them at the end of March. They hit shelves in the early to mid April.
- [61:02]
A
Okay.
- [61:03]
B
And you missed the Oakley Meta Vanguards, our sport glasses.
- [61:06]
A
Okay, that's right.
- [61:07]
B
Great for biking, skiing, running.
- [61:10]
A
Yeah. Now, the running use case is definitely fun. And I think maybe we'll save my back from. I was actually running and checking my phone and ended up pulling my back on a run because I kept looking at my pace so often. So if I could have that in a screen, that alone would be worth. Would be worth all your efforts.
- [61:27]
B
Gotta get you a cellular watch, too. You gotta stop holding your phone.
- [61:30]
A
That's right. All right, Alex, great to see you. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
- [61:33]
B
Thanks, Alex.
- [61:34]
A
Thank you, everybody, for listening. Thanks for listening and watching. And we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.
- [61:40]
C
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