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- [00:02]
David Pierce
Hello and welcome to the vergecast, the flagship podcast of nose pads. I'm your friend David Pearce, and today on the show we're going to talk about smart glasses, specifically why smart glasses are such a pervasive idea in the tech industry right now. We've talked a lot about them. We've been covering smart glasses since the days of Google Glass, and there are so many problems and challenges with smart glasses. There was the whole glass hole problem. There are huge technological problems with actually making this stuff real. There are supply chain issues. There are display things no one has invented yet. Smart glasses are going to be very hard to do correctly, and even if they're done correctly, it's still very much in the air whether people want them and what they want them for. And yet, all of that aside, a huge portion of the tech industry, including most of the biggest hardware manufacturers, are absolutely convinced that smart glasses are the Future. So the Verge's VSong is going to come on. She has used all the smart glasses, she has reviewed all the smart glasses, and she and I are going to try to figure out why the tech industry can't quit smart glasses. It's going to be great. But first, here's everything else happening on the Verge today. This is 90 seconds on the Verge for Tuesday, June 23, 2026. Meta is turning off, at least for now, a program that it created to log everything employees do on their computers, and I mean everything, including mouse clicks and keystrokes, all to use as AI training data. Turns out a lot of the data being collected was very private and made accessible across the entire company. Seems bad. More broadly, there's been a lot of reporting recently about a huge morale problem at Meta, where everything and everyone is being pivoted toward AI, whether they like it or not. Meanwhile, obviously, privacy and regulatory issues just abound at Meta. In a lot of ways, the Meta brand right now is just not great in general, which makes this next thing, frankly, very funny. Meta launched a new pair of smart glasses today, just called the Meta glasses. They're cheaper than the Ray Ban models, which might be the big reason for dropping the partnership with such an expensive brand. And they come in several new fits, including one made with Kylie Jenner. Meta also told the Verge's Victoria Song that the company is working on better privacy systems for the glasses and on making it harder to tamper with the smart glasses in order to record without people knowing. Of course, Meta is also reportedly working on a facial recognition system for those very same smart glasses. So, you know, big grain of salt on all of that. And finally, some very important Gadget News. The HP16C, an iconic old school calculator that was once a big hit among 1980s era programmers, is back. There's only 10,000 of them. It's $130, but now it has a faster chip and it can save and load programs. Your move Claude code. You can read more about all of this@theverge.com that is 90 seconds on the verge for Tuesday, June 23rd.
- [02:53]
Sponsor Announcer 1
Support for today's show comes from Attio, the AI CRM for Modern teams. Some companies pick a CRM because they have to. Others pick one because it helps them win. That's attio. Every signal, from emails and meetings to product usage, sinks into a live picture of every account from day one. Atio's revenue agents instantly prospect and route leads and draft outreach and follow ups in your voice. Others call it an unfair advantage. You just call it your next move. You can go to atio.com vergecast and you'll get 15% off your first year. That's a T T I O.com vergecast Support for the show comes from ServiceNow. AI is moving fast across the enterprise, but without visibility, it's just chaos. Different tools, different models, different teams using AI in completely different ways. ServiceNow turns that chaos control with the AI control tower. You see all your AI across the business in one place, what it's doing, what it's done and what it's about to do. So you stay in control. To put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com
- [04:13]
David Pierce
all right, it's time to talk glasses. The Verge's V song is here. Hi V. Hi. Who were you wearing today, V?
- [04:20]
Victoria Song
These are the Meta Ray Ban Optics style scriber.
- [04:26]
David Pierce
That was a lot of words in a row.
- [04:28]
Victoria Song
Yeah, that was a bunch of fricking words I said. So basically a couple months ago, Meta basically was like, hey, some of you guys have really bad eyesight and prescriptions that are not handled by the original, you know, Meta Ray Ban glasses or the Ray Ban Meta glasses. Sorry, the naming convention of these glasses is very infuriating. So they came out with this version of the glasses which can handle really terrible prescriptions like mine and have a slightly more ergonomic design that is supposedly is better for people's faces. Like the hinges go outwards, there's modular nose pads. So if you have like a really low nose bridge like mine, you can take this little guitar pick tool that's in the thing and pop them off and put them. Put A different pair of plastic nose bridges on there and supposedly the fit is better. And that's what I've been testing.
- [05:21]
David Pierce
So this is very exciting.
- [05:23]
Victoria Song
Yeah. Especially for my prescription. Like, I got a little card and it's like we gave you the good 1.74 high index lenses and I was like, oh, I can tell because the glasses aren't popping out on the other side like they usually are for me. So that's nice.
- [05:36]
David Pierce
Yeah, yeah, this is good news. So I've brought you here for a specific purpose today. We talk a lot about smart glasses on this show. I think in particular, we have spent a lot of time talking about the challenges of smart glasses and all the reasons it's going to be very hard to pull them off. All the reasons they are a total surveillance hellscape. All of the reasons none of this might work. I want to go all the way to the opposite end of the spectrum today, because throughout all of this, I continue to be struck by the fact that everyone in tech has decided that this is going to work. And I think it's pretty unusual actually to have this many companies this aligned on a particular kind of. Of project. Even as we look at AI, right. Like, everybody has different ideas about AI things. Everybody thinks it's going to be smart glasses. And so what I want to do with you is I have found 10 different things a pair of smart glasses can do. I didn't prepare you for this. We're just going to do this off the top and it's going to be great. I have 10 things and you're going to, you're going to give me a one to five score for each one. Five being like, this is a killer app for smart glasses. This is why we're doing this. This is, this is smart glasses one being like, nobody cares. This is not long run important. But the overarching question here is basically like, why can't tech quit smart glasses? Does that sound reasonable to you?
- [06:57]
Victoria Song
Yeah, that's. That sounds reasonable to me. There's a lot of reasons why. But let's get into it.
- [07:01]
David Pierce
Okay. I have, I have 10 features for you. And then at the end you get to fill in any gaps that I missed. This is in no particular order. The first one is navigation. Basically like heads up navigation through the world with, with directions that you can see. 1 to 5. How important is that as a smart glasses feature?
- [07:21]
Victoria Song
I think it's a three. Because if you are traveling and you're in some place you don't know, that's great. It's like a super great use case. When I went to Italy and I had the Meta, yes the meta Ray Ban display, I have to like buffer for a second when I'm talking about their glasses just because they changed the naming conventions. But when I had the display glasses with me in Italy and we were trying to get our way to the Vatican Museum, it was great. I had these heads up directions. The, the it's not like New York City where you have a grid layout and it's just all you need are your cross streets and you can get anywhere just fine. You don't need to really have a great sense of direction. Italy is not that. Rome is not that. There's a lot of twisty little windy roads there. So it was actually really helpful and it was a great little experiment because my family, my in laws, they had their phones out with the Google Maps and I had the glasses on and I was just zooming, I was going fast, I was weaving my way through things. I had my heads up, I was like, oh this is fantastic, this is great. But then I come back home to New York City and places that I know and I never use that feature. So it's one of those things where it's like if you travel a lot or you're just someplace you don't know very well, what a game changer to have it. Especially if you're like in an older city that doesn't have logical grid sure navigation but if you're somewhere at home, you know where you know the streets well, you're never turning that on. Right. It's. Why would you do that? So it's sort of like to me a great use case for when you're traveling. But you know, these glasses are things that big tech wants you to wear every day. So it's a nice to have, not necessarily a need to have, but when you have it, super great in a pinch. Especially if you know like in Italy, the traffic laws are a suggestion and there's always someone on a, on a moped just going real fast and so you need that awareness about you. That was the time where the navigational features, I was like, oh yes, love this. Super great. And they all have different ideas about how they want to do it. Like when I did the Android XR demo, one thing I really liked is that when you look down you can kind of have a map orienting you where you are. So even, you know, maybe when I am able to have an Android XR pair of glasses to test in New York City, when I get out of a subway and I'm disoriented about where in my grid I, I'm looking. I can look down and kind of see that automatically. And then.
- [09:51]
David Pierce
Which, by the way, is a demo we've been seeing for like a decade. They'll like walk out and it'll tell you what direction to turn is A, a terrific idea and B, a very old idea about what the glasses might be.
- [10:01]
Victoria Song
And it's just like, I, I would love to have a pair of glasses that actually does that in the wild outside of a control demo, just to see how much would I actually use that. Because I, I'm always like getting out of the subway and going like, oh, my eyes are garbage. Time to use my phones gazillion times. Zoom to see what, what the street says over there. Okay, that's the wrong direction.
- [10:22]
David Pierce
I just walk until I can see the street sign and then realize I've gone the wrong way. And then I walk to the other street sign.
- [10:28]
Victoria Song
Take out your phone, find the closest street sign. Just zoom in.
- [10:32]
David Pierce
That's a good idea.
- [10:33]
Victoria Song
And then, and then you'll, you'll be able to tell. So these are like things that I've done as someone with garbage eyeballs.
- [10:39]
David Pierce
Yeah.
- [10:39]
Victoria Song
So three.
- [10:39]
David Pierce
Three feels right to me here. It's like, yeah. Feature you will use if you buy a pair of smart glasses. Probably not the reason you will buy smart glasses.
- [10:46]
Victoria Song
Yes.
- [10:46]
David Pierce
In, in theory. I buy that.
- [10:48]
Victoria Song
A nice to have.
- [10:48]
David Pierce
Sure.
- [10:49]
Victoria Song
Sometimes. Yeah. Okay.
- [10:50]
David Pierce
Thing number two, big ass monitor for your computer.
- [10:54]
Victoria Song
This is going to be a two. But I want to caveat this here.
- [10:57]
David Pierce
Honestly. Two feels generous. Two feels generous.
- [11:00]
Victoria Song
I'm going to caveat this. I'm giving it a 2. Because there is a certain subsect of people who I've interviewed for various things who are just like, this is the number one reason for XR ever.
- [11:11]
David Pierce
We call these people people who bought Vision pros and refused to feel bad about it. That's what those people are called.
- [11:17]
Victoria Song
Correct. And you know, I've been in situations where I've used a pair of xreal glasses and been able to have a second monitor on a plane where, you know, if you use a second monitor often and you're on a, and you're on a place where all of a sudden you're like, oh, crap, I have, I only have 13 inches of my MacBook Air to work with. How, how dare anyone expect me to work with such limited screen real estate? And you know, there are people who have called into the hotline who have been like, I need my second monitor in a coffee shop. What do I wear? And then I tell them that the XRA glasses exist. There is a very loyal, passionate subset of people who will absolutely buy a pair of glasses for this reason and this reason alone. Hence I give it a two. But when we talk about the general
- [12:01]
David Pierce
public, there are a couple on this list that I think are going to be either a one or a five and nothing in between. But like some people, they will be the reason they buy the thing. And for other people, utterly irrelevant feature. And I think, I think this goes on that list, but I think it is mostly irrelevant. Godspeed if this is the thing that you want out of your smart glasses. I don't think this is for most people.
- [12:23]
Victoria Song
This is not for the, I want to say 90% of people, but for the 10% of hyper passionate people who love XR who think this is the ultimate way to experience productivity in a coffee shop. Yeah, they're gonna 100% buy the first pair of smart glasses that allow them to do this. So. And honestly prefer that for your plane work than a vision pro. Just saying, like, have we seen people with vision pros on, on planes in the wild frequently? No, because it's heavy.
- [12:54]
David Pierce
So, yeah, someday I'm gonna reveal my take about VR on planes and how it's a terrific idea and your mind is just going to melt. But today is not that Davy thing. Number three, camera, just pure hands free on your face camera for taking pictures and video.
- [13:12]
Victoria Song
Four, because again, we're going to have a subsect of people who are being like, if I see a camera on your face, I'm a punch you. And I will say, I will say that when I go out into the world, sometimes I take my little bangs and I go like this over the camera so that people, not because I'm using it in that way. I try to be very mindful about when I'm using these devices, but because I just don't want people to notice that I'm not using it, but that it has the potential to be used. And I'm just using my side bang cut to slightly obscure the camera because one, if the camera's on, I'm gonna ruin the shot anyway with bangs. And this is actually why I've had a lot of haircuts with bangs recently because it's great for testing not only camera placement and how often I tilt my head in these photos. But yeah, but I will say that when I wear these at home, I get really great David Attenborough level Cat videos. And I love that that's real. And there are so many people I know who, you know, their main reason for that is in the privacy of their own home when they want to have really great candid videos of their kids. This something they really enjoy doing. Content creators, I have seen some like recipe creators use meta Ray Ban glasses or Ray Ban meta glasses, whichever model they have while they're doing POV shots of like recipes and doing. I have seen some of that pop up in my TikTok feed. And obviously some, some commenters are always disappointed in that creator for submitting to surveillance tech, whatever. But you know, there are certain public or in the privacy of your own home where you can feel a little more comfortable with those things, where the camera as a content creation tool is very popular. And then you have accessibility communities where like we've done vertcast on this before where the low vision and blind communities, for some of them, they feel that the ability to have the real time AI, like the Be My eyes feature with these glasses is super helpful for them to be, you know, just kind of living more independent lives where they can get help via the camera as to what they're seeing, what they're doing. So there, there it is a very powerful tool, which is why I give it a 4 as the reason why a lot of people are going to buy it. But it doesn't get a five because it's going to be a reason why some people don't buy specific glasses as well. So I've heard that from, from people.
- [15:45]
David Pierce
That is fair. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think to the extent that there is going to be a market for smart glasses without a camera, I think you're probably right that it's not, it is not like the killer app for these things.
- [15:56]
Victoria Song
It's not the killer.
- [15:57]
David Pierce
Yeah.
- [15:57]
Victoria Song
Because it is going to convince a lot of people not to buy it or to buy one that doesn't have a camera. So I think the solution, and I don't, you know, this is free. I'm putting this out here. I think the solution is some sort of physical shutter or a modular camera where you can stick it in and out so that when you're in a like, situation where you're like, I don't want to make people feel uncomfortable. I can actually put a physical shutter or something over the camera to just visually signify that I'm not being a creep right now, you know, like a version of my bangs that's not so finicky or whatnot. I think that would be A really smart solution. There's probably reasons why they haven't done that, but I'm just saying we need,
- [16:38]
David Pierce
like, free idea beanies that you wear that have little flaps that come down.
- [16:42]
Victoria Song
Yeah. Or like, you know, with your webcams on your computer where you just have a thing where you go, it's not on. Like, I feel like that would be a super easy thing to do to make other people feel comfortable. I don't know why we haven't done that yet.
- [16:56]
Sponsor Announcer 2
So. Yeah, I agree.
- [16:57]
David Pierce
All right, let's keep moving. Thing number four, and you kind of mentioned this already, and I think this is actually a quick five, and we can just move on is accessibility stuff. And this is the sort of be my eyes stuff. It's live captioning, which comes up a lot. But the. The idea that basically for people who are low vision or have hearing difficulties, these are an accessibility thing. And I think you've reported on this enough to know that this is very much a killer app for people.
- [17:23]
Sponsor Announcer 2
Right.
- [17:23]
David Pierce
For people who need this easy. Huge victory.
- [17:26]
Victoria Song
Yeah, huge victory. The only thing is that they need to commit to supporting it because there are people within that community who are worried that in three years they're just going to take this tool that I've come to rely on away. But, like, fair worry. Very fair worry. But, like, you know, easy five for me. Yeah.
- [17:42]
David Pierce
Okay, cool. Next one. Music and podcasts just basically like smart glasses as headphones.
- [17:48]
Victoria Song
5. Like, really, it is. It is higher than camera. Yeah. Because there's no. There's no downside, really, to it. I get to have my situational awareness. It is actually easily the feature I use the most. So, like, I. I'm in a house. It was a very vertical, narrow house, and sometimes I have to yell to my spouse or something or they're yelling to me. And if we have AirPods in, we just can't hear each other. So then we have to trek up three floors of things and be like, I've been yelling. You hear me? And it's like, oh, sorry, I got my really great noise canceling whatever's on. So when I'm doing laundry and I'm just listening to an audiobook or a podcast and I have these on where they're not sunglasses. Indoors, I just use this. And I can hear things going on when I'm outside on a walk and there's my aggro neighbor going 50 in a residential area in our giant Range Rover, I can keep my awareness and not turn into a pancake while I'm Walking about, listening to my music and audiobooks. The only time it's not great is if you're on the subway. Yes, you are going to have to pull out your AirPods or whatever you use at that point. But I use the audio all the time for my podcasts and all of that. It is like the number one uncontroversial feature that I use these for.
- [19:01]
David Pierce
I'm with you actually. And the meta ones in particular are like a sneakily great phone call device. Yes, they sound good. The mic is pretty good.
- [19:10]
Victoria Song
My only caveat is that I often have to do this when I'm on calls because of my low nose bridge.
- [19:15]
David Pierce
You go full librarian.
- [19:17]
Victoria Song
I go full librarian because the way my nose is shaped and I even have the low nose bridge modular things that I put on here. I still on some phone calls, I've been told I sound muffled and I'm like, hold on, let me just. How do I sound now? And they're like, you sound great. So that is my one, my one feedback. But for most people who don't have a very low profile nose, you probably won't ever have that issue.
- [19:43]
David Pierce
So yeah, okay, so that's a, that's a five for headphones. That actually makes me happy because I'm with you in that. That is my single most used feature. But I kind of feel controversial. That was just me. That's so that makes me happy and actually related to this one. The next one on my list is communication, like calls. Video calls is a thing that has been demoed since like Google Glass, but basically just any sort of communication tool, phone, video, whatever you want on smart glasses 1 to 5 3.
- [20:16]
Victoria Song
Just because I don't think they have tweaked what the best use for it is because I have the non display version on right now. I get a text on my phone. It's like someone has texted you and then I have to either have to like out loud say that or pull out my phone. So it's not really a replacement.
- [20:34]
David Pierce
The spoken communication stuff is awful that way.
- [20:36]
Victoria Song
It's not great about being in public. So the vast majority of what people will probably buy at this point is the model that I'm wearing, which is just mostly audio. So when it's a mostly audio experience, it's not that different from a smartwatch. And a smartwatch can be a little more discreet and easy to interact with, in my opinion. But when we get to the display glasses at a price that's affordable to people, I do think being able to see a calendar Notification. Being able to see who texts you and what very quickly, very discreetly is gonna be much more of a reason. We're just not fully there yet that people can have. And I also am very mindful of once you put the display in, you just inevitably are always looking off to the side every so often. And people just start feeling a little disrespected when you do that a little too often. So I'm not sure how that will play out in the long term. Which is why I say three because I think it could be a very good use case. But not sure how people will feel long term.
- [21:36]
David Pierce
Are you at all compelled by the idea of the like first person video call that you can see what I see as, as we're on a FaceTime
- [21:44]
Victoria Song
or whatever together, that's like a sometimes thing for me. I don't think that's going to be. I think that makes way more sense in an enterprise or a workspace. So it's sort of like, hey, I'm trying to fix this thing. I don't know how to do this kind of call my father in law being like, I don't know how to fix my toilet. Yes, that's going to be great. That's awesome.
- [22:04]
David Pierce
This by the way, killer app for smart glasses in general is like in general see instructions next to you as you do stuff. Remote support, like all this stuff. There's a reason smart glasses have found genuine like honest to God product market fit in like factories. Like that's, that's a real good thing. And I think you're probably right that this works there better than anywhere right now.
- [22:23]
Victoria Song
Yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be like the heads up directions where when you need it. Ah, great. I have, I have a use case for it. I, I am sure many husbands will be using it when their wives are like, I asked you to get hollandaise sauce, I can't find it in the grocery store. And then the wife is just like, I'm just gonna give you directions. Turn left here, go there. Yes, I think that'll be a use case but it'll also be a sometimes thing. You're not gonna buy it just so you can do that, but when you need it, it'll be cool. That sort of thing.
- [22:53]
David Pierce
Okay, I buy it.
- [22:56]
Sponsor Announcer 1
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Sponsor Announcer 3
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- [25:22]
David Pierce
I have definitely already been here. Now was it left right or right left? Well, maybe I'll cut a path out
- [25:31]
Sponsor Announcer 1
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- [25:33]
Sponsor Announcer 3
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- [25:40]
David Pierce
It feels good to get help quick. It feels good to Geico.
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- [26:23]
David Pierce
Okay, so so far we've talked through navigation, big ass monitor, camera accessibility, what I would just call headphone mode and communication. The next one on my list is kind of next to communication, which is notifications and reminders. And this becomes, I think another question of what matters in audio versus what matters when there's a display in front of you. But again, in terms of like why big tech can't quit this idea, you do see pop up notifications in the corner of your vision in every single one of these demos and concept videos. But for people who might someday buy these. Is that, is that a killer app? One to five, what do you think?
- [27:03]
Victoria Song
That's a four. And the funny thing is that I just got a notification through these glasses saying that my best friend had texted me. And that's good, that's good, that is cool. But the reason why I don't give it a full five because I do think there are a lot of people who would love a discreet way to be like, oh, I got nothing notified while I'm heads down and doing stuff, is that we haven't found the tweak yet of how to filter these notifications in a way that's truly useful. Because I know for a fact that my best friend probably just texted me some TikTok video of something and that that can wait and that, you know, it kind of distracted me from this thing that I need my full focus on right now, which is doing a great bridge cast. So in some ways, yes, great, love it. Going to be super helpful when I can see. Oh crap, I have a, I have a meeting coming up soon. I got to go and do all that sort of stuff. I think that'll be great for a lot of people. But the notification deluge is why we don't want to look at our phones anymore too. And you can't not see it in front of your eye or in your ears. So I think for some people, in some cases A4, it is A very powerful use case. But what they haven't figured out is how to have intelligent notifications. So ones that you really. It's just everything at the moment and you don't always need everything coming through on your glasses. You just don't you don't want that. It's going to make you super tired of it long term. So I think they need to do a little more tweaking and fine tuning and giving you more control over all the different types of smart glasses for it to be a super killer use case, which is why it's only getting a four.
- [28:40]
David Pierce
Yeah, I think you're right. I remember I had a conversation with a very senior Google executive like 10 or 11 years ago now, and what he told me is that the single hardest problem for all of this is a understanding as the product maker that most of the time your job is to not be visible at all. That A, in fact your AR glasses should be nowhere most of the time, and that B, figuring out the. When you've hit the level of actually putting yourself in somebody's face is so different than the level of buzzing somebody's phone in their pocket that it is going to take a long time to figure out. And boy, are we not anywhere close to anybody actually solving that problem.
- [29:20]
Victoria Song
Nowhere near.
- [29:21]
David Pierce
But I think you're right that, like, done correctly, that becomes a killer app for this thing. But that done correctly is a. Is a big giant ask.
- [29:29]
Victoria Song
They pitch these as AI glasses. And what I want the AI in these glasses to actually do is know when I'm in a meeting and when to silence notifications and then maybe surface the notification that it reads as urgent or not urgent. So it can decide for me when I'm in a thing, whether I actually need to know it, at what moment. And like that they can't do that. They can just push it. All they do is they push it. So, you know, we're not at the point where it makes, where it's killer. It's just another phone on your face kind of situation.
- [30:00]
David Pierce
Agreed. Okay. I'm glad you brought up AI because I have three AI ones for you in a row. Oh, let's go. AI thing number one translation. Another one that comes up in all of these demos. The idea of like you and I are talking and I can either see or hear you speaking in another language, in my language, in real time.
- [30:18]
Victoria Song
Two, it's. It's a better in theory idea than it is in practice for me thus far because one, how often are you in a situation that you need things translated there. There's going to be some, some people who travel a lot, love that there's going to be people in multilingual families, in which case, how good are you at doing pidgin? Because my family speaks Konglish and they to the, these language that are very creative and I think has thus far really tripped up these AI translators that I've tested. And then there's just like the, the, the, the whole issue of. Again, I was in Italy, I put these translating things on and when you have everyone in Italian yelling around you mixed with English, it doesn't know who to translate when that is a thing that's really tough. So right now, these live AI translations with these glasses and other devices, they're great for when you're in a quiet place one on one with someone. Again, I was on. I wrote about an optimizer. I was on a train with this really cute Chinese grandma and she only trusted me. But like, I don't know why. Well, I know why. Look at my face. But she, she went up to me and she's like, I'm so afraid I'm not going to get off the thing. And we were using these AI translators and that was a really wonderful experience because she was so scared. And I was able to help her even though I'm not the right kind of East Asian for her in that, in that particular experience. So I think once in a while it'll be great, but it won't work quite as well as you want and there's a lot of technical challenges. So too right now I think I
- [31:52]
David Pierce
agree it's, it's a better. It's a terrific demo more than it is like a really sort of everyday mainstream product and it probably will be that way for a while.
- [32:02]
Victoria Song
Everyday life is very loud. We do horrible things to language that, that the AI has a hard time keeping up with. So we'll have to see.
- [32:10]
David Pierce
And actually in a weird way the behavior of like holding my phone up to my mouth while I talk and then holding my phone up to your mouth while you talk is actually kind of solves a bunch of those problems in a way that like ambiently listening with my smart glasses doesn't. Yeah, it feels awkward, but it like weirdly kind of works. Every time I've tried that it has worked better than it does.
- [32:28]
Victoria Song
It works because we understand. Oh, I have to talk slower.
- [32:30]
David Pierce
Right? We know what we're doing.
- [32:31]
Victoria Song
I have to be more patient. Where if they don't know and it's just happening and it's a one way translation where you understand what they're saying. You're. You're Chewbacca ing the experience.
- [32:41]
David Pierce
Yes.
- [32:42]
Victoria Song
Yeah.
- [32:44]
David Pierce
Chewbacca is a verb. Is a new one. I really, I like that very much.
- [32:47]
Victoria Song
It's my life.
- [32:48]
David Pierce
All right. AI Thing number two, facial recognition, AKA Neelai Patel's ideal dystopian hellscape. The thing where you're walking along and it pops up a thing over their head that says, this is the person you met two weeks ago.
- [33:01]
Victoria Song
This is a one. This is like a. This is like a do not want
- [33:04]
David Pierce
get this out of my face.
- [33:06]
Victoria Song
I think the vast majority of people do not want get this out of my face. The only time that people actually want this is like when you are at a mixer or a meeting and you want to be saved the 0.2 seconds of embarrassment when you're like, oh, shoot, this person knows me and I don't know them. Uh, but honestly, that's easily solved by being a human and saying, hi.
- [33:29]
David Pierce
Can I tell you my theory about this feature?
- [33:31]
Victoria Song
Yes.
- [33:32]
David Pierce
I think this feature should only exist 30 minutes at a time. Maybe not even. Maybe like 10 minutes at a time. And it should cost $500 and. And it should be. This should be like some charity should create this and it should give the money to a good cause. And you should be able to very briefly turn it on to solve this one specific problem that you're talking about. And it should be prohibitively expensive. But if you're like, I am not going to get this job if I don't remember this person's name. It's worth it to me to turn this on for three minutes. And I'm going to do it. I'll allow it. This is like an ambient thing I think is just a complete societal nightmare. But, like, let's, let's monetize this in insane ways. I'm all for it.
- [34:12]
Victoria Song
I'm going to, like, kind of riff on what your version is, and I think geo fencing. So, like, if you could geofence this, this feature to like a conference hall or let's say you're working with dementia patients who can't remember people. And I think that's one use case that people sometimes quote facial recognition in these glasses for. Like, let's say you're a dementia patient. You need to remember who people in your family are. You can geofence the. Your house for. For a certain amount of people and program who it's supposed to recognize. If you have heavy guardrails for specific places and, or specific. Like in a hospital, maybe you're okay in a certain treatment ward for. For dem. Dementia patients. And you can geofence the. The feature so that it only works within that specific place. I think maybe you could make an argument for it.
- [35:02]
David Pierce
I also like the Idea of it being like a, like a two way buddy list situation where like, yeah, you sign up to remember me with your glasses and I sign up to be remembered by your glasses. That becomes like a. A more give and take situation that works. So like yeah, at. At a teeny tiny sort of one person to person scale. There is something here as a like overall feature of these devices. I. I'm with you. One out of five.
- [35:27]
Victoria Song
Can we give a zero? Like a zero out of five? Because I just know that like I've had people in my DMs just screaming that this is not something they want and totally, I feel like it's obvious why.
- [35:39]
David Pierce
Nor should they.
- [35:40]
Sponsor Announcer 1
It is.
- [35:40]
David Pierce
It is Nilai Patel's most monstrous take is. Is my humble opinion. Um, all right, next. One last AI One is just sort of overall AI interactions. Everybody wants you to use these things to talk to, chat GPT, talk to meta AI as like the sort of ambient companionship of an AI bot. One to five. What do you think?
- [35:59]
Victoria Song
It's a two. There's always going to be someone who really argues or comes up with a really creative way. So I'm giving a. A like an allowance for someone who finds a way that I'm not thinking of in this moment that is creative, that is useful and that is helpful. But by and large, I fundamentally disagree that AI is the killer use case for these things. Just because when I've used it outside of very heavily guardrailed demos, fricking useless. I've taken these glasses and looked at a pile of books and been like, hey, these are my books. I'm trying to figure out what to read. What do you recommend? And they go, I don't have an opinion. Well, thank you. That is an actual demo, actual thing that I've tried with these glasses where it was like, I don't have an opinion. You should just read what interests you. Well, thank you. I bought the book because it interests me. I'm asking for a recommendation.
- [36:51]
David Pierce
I will say we had friends over a couple of weeks ago and the one of them went to the wine store, pointed his phone at the shelf of wine and said, which one of these should I buy to go with? I think we were having pizza and it recommended him like a pretty good bottle of wine. And he came and he was so proud of himself for having used AI to successfully solve this problem. And it was good wine. And I was like a, like genuinely neat AI feature B, perfectly fine on your phone. Like, we've solved no new problems by offloading this to smart classes.
- [37:23]
Victoria Song
Or it's just like, I. One of the suggested demos that I've done in the past is like, open your fridge and ask it to suggest a good recipe for you. I opened my fridge wilting vegetables on the left, sad other things on the right, and it was just like. Like you could make scrambled eggs. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yes. Scrambled eggs. That's. That's what's. I'm gonna shore, you know, So I
- [37:46]
David Pierce
think the correct answer there is like, v, get your life together, Love. Meta AI.
- [37:50]
Victoria Song
Yeah. Or. Or, you know, my spouse is a super car person. I get dragged to car events. A lot of the testing I did with these for identification of objects was going up to cars and going, what am I looking at? What model of car is this giant Ferrari logo? Right. I'm like, even I know a Ferrari logo at this point. And it's just like, oh, that's a sports car. Can't tell you which sports car it is. Not very great at logo recognition. And at that point I'm like, I don't see the point of this.
- [38:24]
David Pierce
Yeah, I'm. I'm eager to see the ways in which that stuff gets better with camera stuff in particular. But right now, that as like an ambient thing just doesn't really seem to work.
- [38:36]
Victoria Song
Unless you're a museum and you've programmed these glasses, and instead of like those crappy little audio tour things where you have to punch things in, you give them a pair of glasses, they look at a thing and it pops up what the thing is. I tried doing that in Italy, but again, the Pope did not have holy wifi at the Vatican Museum. It worked for one Belvedere torso. And the rest, it was like, here is a Renaissance butt that you can look at.
- [39:00]
David Pierce
So Pope Leo, if you're listening and I know that you are, fix this for V for next time. All right, I have one more for you. And I saved this for last for you in particular, because it's fitness tracking. This is like a sort of niche thing right now. But I will say still to this day, the nicest thing you have said about a pair of smart glasses was about the Oakley. What are they called? The Vanguards, which are fundamentally fitness based smart glasses. Uh, so fitness tracking as a. As a killer app for smart glasses, 1 to 5, what do you think?
- [39:34]
Victoria Song
3. Because it depends on the implementation. Uh, I think if you.
- [39:38]
David Pierce
Let's assume it's. If it's good, are we looking at like 4 or 5? Like, does this become a reason people. A lot of people Buy smart glasses.
- [39:46]
Victoria Song
I think it's a reason why people might buy sports smart glasses. Just very like specific use case sports smart glasses where you can swap the. Which is an idea that the Vanguards have where you swap the lenses for the sport that you're doing and then you can get like cues like, oh, you've done a mile, here's your cue. Or oh, your heart rate training, your heart rate's too high, here's a visual cue in here. Like slow it down. Like for those elite or like very intense athletes. I think that could be really useful, especially if you give heads up navigational directions where they can be like, oh, I know where I'm going or I know where I'm running, here's my route that I think becomes a very useful and powerful training tool. But for the average person who's is just like, I'm gonna run my local 5k, you don't need that, don't. You're good.
- [40:31]
David Pierce
These are for the people who like to email me saying, actually, Garmins are better than the Apple Watch. Like, if that's you, this is for you.
- [40:38]
Victoria Song
If that's you, if that's you. I actually think you're really gonna enjoy the, the Oakley Vanguards. Like I really enjoy them when I'm just training and I could imagine them being, you know, runners there. They're always doing the vlog. They're like, mile one, mile two, mile three. Like, if that's you, I think you're gonna have a good time with these Oakley meta Vanguards and having time lapses that you can share on Strava. Like that's, you're gonna love them. They're expensive but you're gonna love them. But it's a specific use case and it makes sense and it's a tool that is very clear. It's like a. I don't know. There's an idea I just had. What if we had smart glasses that are made for specific use cases that people are like, oh, that totally makes sense. Like content creation glasses that you use for that specific purpose, or exercise glasses for that specific purpose.
- [41:28]
David Pierce
Well, that's what, that's what I was just going to say because I think everybody wants smart glasses to be like the smartphone in that it is sort of the one device you have for everything. And the advantage that the Vanguards and things like them will have is that it is a specific thing for which people buy specific gear. And there's no. Nobody feels bad taking off their running sunglasses at the end of a run.
- [41:47]
Sponsor Announcer 4
Right?
- [41:47]
David Pierce
Like it is. You bought it for that purpose, you use it for that purpose, and then you take it off, and that is such a lower bar for success. Then, like, put your prescription in, use them all day every day for the
- [41:56]
Victoria Song
rest of your life, and worry about battery life all day for the rest of your life. You wear those, Those. Those meta glasses, the. The Oakley ones. I become Lady Jabroni. It's a different Persona, and everyone looking at me is just like, oh, she's just doing that thing. Yeah, good for her. But yeah, it's Lady Jabaroni.
- [42:16]
David Pierce
Parentheses, complimentary.
- [42:18]
Victoria Song
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I look like a certain type of person when I put those on. And that's fine. It's great.
- [42:26]
David Pierce
Yeah, that's what you're doing.
- [42:29]
Victoria Song
Lady Gibroni is a vibe.
- [42:32]
David Pierce
All right. So it seems like we're at the point now where we've gone through this whole list and the most basic use cases, basically, headphone mode, camera, simple sort of notification stuff, fitness tracking. Like, there's a handful of things that have potential to get there, but right now, it is still the simple stuff. That is the best reason people might go buy a pair of smart glasses.
- [42:53]
Victoria Song
100% nothing. All of the big ambitious stuff about this kind of replacing your phone, I'm not sold on it yet. I don't think they found it's a bunch of little things that are nice to have when you have them, but as an overarching one, big thesis. One, I don't believe AI is it. And two, we're not there. I don't know if we'll ever get there. There's very. It's a very possible chance that meta will ruin it for everyone by being meta before we ever get there. But, you know, with niche tech, it has to fit into your life. And the things that actually fit into your life naturally and organically are the. The listen to your podcast, the taking a picture of your cat or your kid, and the easy stuff. That's the stuff that people like. And that's the reason why the most basic versions are the ones that sell and not the ones that are. Who's e Wutsy? Everything is floating in my vision, so totally.
- [43:50]
David Pierce
Yeah. All right, that's my list. It was actually 11 things V. I'm sorry, Translation was originally a sub thing of communication, but once we started talking about AI, I just made it its own thing. So those are 11 things. If you think there are killer apps that we missed, if you think there are other cool things that people are gonna wanna do with smart glasses, Hit us up. Call the hotline 866-version-11. Send us email vergecasthebirds.com, yell at V on social media. We love hearing from you. Don't yell at V on social media.
- [44:16]
Victoria Song
Don't yell at me. Politely give me your comments and I will respond in good faith.
- [44:21]
David Pierce
There we go. We love to hear it. Vy, thank you for being here. Appreciate it. All right, all right, that's it for the show. Thank you to V for being here and thank you as always for listening. Like I said, if you have thoughts about smart glasses, if you have things that make you absolutely not want smart glasses is if you think you have things that you will buy them for that we didn't talk about. We want to hear from you. The hotline is 866-version-11. The email is vergecasthe verge.com Send us anything and everything all the time. We truly, truly love hearing from you. And as always, the best thing you can do to support everything that we're up to here is go to theverge.com subscribe and subscribe to the Verge. You get ad free podcasts, including this one. You get all of our exclusive newsletters. You get all of our coverage of smart glasses. V's working on a bunch of really cool stuff has done a bunch of great coverage. We'll put it all out there for you. Go get it all. Theverge.com subscribe thank you in advance and thank you to everybody who subscribes. The vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kieffer, Travis Lerchuk and Aaron Locasio. We will see you tomorrow. Rock and roll.
- [45:20]
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- [45:47]
David Pierce
It feels good to have support. It feels good to geico.
- [45:50]
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