Are Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses the Future of Face Computers?

Summary

WSJ Tech News Briefing: Are Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses the Future of Face Computers?
Release Date: December 20, 2024
Host: Danny Lewis, The Wall Street Journal

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Introduction

In this episode of the WSJ Tech News Briefing, host Danny Lewis explores two cutting-edge applications of artificial intelligence and augmented reality technology reshaping consumer products and the future of computing. The discussion delves into how Mondelez International leverages AI to innovate in the snack industry and examines whether Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses might herald the next generation of face-mounted computers, potentially surpassing bulkier alternatives like Apple’s Vision Pro and Meta Quest 3 headsets.

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AI in the Snack Industry: Mondelez’s Recipe for Success

Mondelez International, the powerhouse behind beloved brands such as Oreos, Chips Ahoy, Ritz Crackers, and Clif Bars, is harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to revolutionize product development. Instead of relying solely on traditional trial-and-error methods, Mondelez has integrated a generative AI tool to expedite and enhance the creation and modification of snack recipes.

Isabel Bousquet, a WSJ reporter covering enterprise technology and AI, provides an in-depth look into this transformation:

"AI is here for Oreos. It's already happening and you don't even know." [01:30]

Mondelez’s AI tool allows food scientists to input various characteristics—ranging from the number of chocolate chips to the butteriness of the dough—and generate multiple recipe variations tailored to these specifications. The AI-driven approach accelerates the development process, making it "four to five times faster" compared to traditional methods [03:25].

The tool was developed in collaboration with ThoughtWorks, following their acquisition of the software consultancy Forkind. By integrating Mondelez’s proprietary data on recipes with ThoughtWorks’ engineering expertise, the AI ensures that new product iterations maintain the brand’s signature qualities while introducing innovative variations.

"The process is not fundamentally different. It's just a lot faster and more efficient." [03:48]

Mondelez’s strategic use of AI not only streamlines recipe development but also enables the company to swiftly respond to market trends, introducing new product lines such as gluten-free or flavored variations with greater agility.

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The Future of Face Computers: Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses

Transitioning from the culinary arts to augmented reality, the episode examines Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses as a potential game-changer in the realm of face-mounted computing devices. Unlike the bulky and expensive headsets like the Meta Quest 3 or Apple Vision Pro, these smart glasses offer a more discreet and stylish alternative without compromising functionality.

Joanna Stern, WSJ Senior Personal Tech Columnist, shares her experiences and insights:

"These are just sunglasses with a camera, mic, and speakers. They’re sort of dumb smart glasses because they don't do that much." [06:24]

Despite their seemingly modest capabilities, Stern highlights the practical benefits of Ray-Ban Smart Glasses through personal anecdotes:

"I have just become obsessed with taking these out in the world, especially when I'm with my kids on the weekends or on vacations because I don't have to hold a phone in front of my face to always take a video or a photo." [06:24]

The smart glasses blend seamlessly into daily life, allowing users to capture moments without the intrusive presence of a smartphone. Unlike bulky headsets that dominate one’s field of vision, Ray-Ban’s design maintains the aesthetics of regular sunglasses while incorporating essential smart features.

Stern contrasts these glasses with Meta’s upcoming Orion prototype, an augmented reality eyewear still in development:

"Orion is what's in the middle here. That's what these companies are trying to get to. [...] you can actually see digital info in your real world. And that’s a ways off." [10:21]

While Orion aims to bridge the gap between simple smart glasses and full-fledged mixed reality headsets, Ray-Ban’s current offering represents a significant step towards more accessible and user-friendly face computers. The collaboration between Meta and Ray-Ban is poised to make augmented reality a more integral part of everyday life without the need for cumbersome equipment.

"Mark Zuckerberg responded and said, 'Next year is a big year for Meta glasses.'" [11:51]

This endorsement from Meta’s CEO underscores the company’s commitment to refining and expanding its smart glasses lineup, signaling a promising trajectory for the technology's mainstream adoption.

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Conclusion

The WSJ Tech News Briefing episode on December 20, 2024, underscores the profound impact of AI and augmented reality on diverse industries. Mondelez International exemplifies how traditional sectors like food manufacturing can harness AI to innovate and stay competitive. Simultaneously, Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses illustrate the potential for augmented reality to become seamlessly integrated into daily life, offering a glimpse into the future of face-mounted computing devices.

As AI continues to streamline product development in industries like snacks, and augmented reality technologies evolve to become more user-friendly and stylish, the intersection of these advancements heralds a new era of intelligent and immersive consumer experiences.

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Notable Quotes:

• "AI is here for Oreos. It's already happening and you don't even know." – Isabel Bousquet [01:30]
• "These are just sunglasses with a camera, mic, and speakers. They’re sort of dumb smart glasses because they don't do that much." – Joanna Stern [06:24]
• "Mark Zuckerberg responded and said, 'Next year is a big year for Meta glasses.'" – Joanna Stern [11:51]

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Credits:
Produced by Julie Chang
Theme Music by Danny Lewis, Jessica Fenton, and Michael Lavalle
Supervising Producer: Kathryn Milsob
Development Producer: Aisha Al Muslim
Deputy Editors: Scott Salloway and Chris Zinsley
Head of News Audio: Falana Patterson

Transcript

[Amazon Representative]

Amazon Q Business is the generative AI Assistant from aws, because business can be slow, like wading through mud. But Amazon Q helps streamline work, so tasks like summarizing monthly results can be done in no time. Learn what Amazon Q Business can do for [e-mail] learnmore welcome to Tech News Briefing.

[Danny Lewis]

It's Friday, December 20th. I'm Danny Lewis for the Wall Street Journal. Oreos and Chips Ahoy may not be the first things that come to mind when you hear the WOR artificial intelligence. But snack behemoth Mondelez, which owns the popular cookie brands, is turning to AI tools to speed up the creation of new recipes. Just ahead, we'll hear how and what this means for your supermarket snack aisle. And later, is the real future of Face computers lower tech than Apple's Vision Pro or the Meta Quest 3 headset? WSJ Senior personal tech columnist Joanna Stern joins us to explain why Meta's Ray Ban smart glasses may be the forerunners to a mixed reality future. But first, Mondelez International is the giant behind snacks like Sour Patch Kids, Ritz crackers and Clif bars. And now Mondelez has built a generative AI tool to help its food scientists come up with new products and tweak recipes faster than ever before. WSJ reporter Isabel Bousquet has been following this, and she joins us now with more. So, Isabel, is AI coming for Oreos?

[Isabel Bousquet]

AI is here for Oreos. It's already happening and you don't even know. I didn't realize this, but actually the recipe for snacks like Oreos and Chips Ahoy and Ritz Crackers, it's changed several times over the years and it continues to change. Companies like Mondelez continue to iterate on it. And then in addition to that, they are also constantly, as I'm sure you've seen in the snack aisle, rolling out new brand offshoots and minis and thins and gluten frees and golden Oreos. So they are just constantly in this position of having to come up with and test new recipes. And AI is playing a bigger and bigger role in that process.

[Danny Lewis]

How is Mondelez now then using AI? You know, what are some examples for how it's using it in this whole process?

[Isabel Bousquet]

Yeah, so they developed this tool essentially, and this tool has an interface where you can go in and it includes a number of different characteristics like appeal, appearance, aroma, taste, and you can choose which characteristics you want to optimize for. You know, maybe you want to, you know, optimize for a certain level of chocolate chips in the appearance or the roundness of the edge or the perforation of the edge or the amount of holes in it. And some are weird, like vanilla intensity or butteriness or egg flavor. And then this AI tool will generate a handful of various kinds of recipes that might fit the bill. And then in this lab in New Jersey, which is set up like a high school chemistry lab, they'll actually cook the recipes and then they'll feed it to the staff and see what people think.

[Danny Lewis]

So how is the AI then changing the process? What's different now that this is getting involved versus how they used to do it before?

[Isabel Bousquet]

Yeah, the process is not fundamentally different. It's just a lot faster and more efficient. In the past, it would be a manual process for the food scientists based on their own expertise. Just trial and error, create some new recipe options to try. But the AI is essentially getting you to the recipe that you want to get to a lot faster. They're saying four to five times faster, essentially.

[Danny Lewis]

Who made the AI model that Bondelies is using?

[Isabel Bousquet]

So they started developing this a few years ago with a software consultancy called Forkind, and it was later acquired by ThoughtWorks. So they're still working with ThoughtWorks on that. The ThoughtWorks engineers do the feature coding and stuff. And then they're working with the tech team at Mondelez, who has all this juicy proprietary data on things like the actual recipe of what an Oreo is.

[Danny Lewis]

So proprietary recipes are really big secret in the snack world.

[Isabel Bousquet]

Yeah.

[Danny Lewis]

Does Mondelez and companies like it, its rivals have concern about what AI tools might do with that information?

[Isabel Bousquet]

In this instance, they own the tool. It's not a public tool. It's not chatgpt. In this instance, that information getting leaked isn't really a risk. It's also worth mentioning that a lot of times today when we talk about AI, we're talking about generative AI. This is not that. This is a more traditional kind of AI known as machine learning. And it's very structured and it's a lot more controlled and predictable.

[Danny Lewis]

Isabel Busquet covers enterprise technology and AI for the Wall Street Journal. Coming up, a few years ago, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg went all in on the idea of a high tech virtual reality metaverse. But could a different and simpler Meta product be the real future of this technology? That's after the break.

[Amazon Representative]

Amazon Cubusiness is the new generative AI assistant from aws. Because many tasks can make business slow, as if wading through mud help. Luckily, there's a faster, easier, less messy choice. Amazon Q can securely understand your business data and use that knowledge to streamline tasks. Now you can summarize quarterly results or do complex analysis in no time. Q Got this? Learn what Amazon Q Business can do for [e-mail] learnmore.

[Danny Lewis]

Bulky headsets like the Meta Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro have been held up as the gateway into a world of mixed reality computing where digital information is overlaid onto the real world in front of your eyes, just like a heads up display in a first person video game. But WSJ senior personal tech columnist Joanna Stern says a different Meta product may actually be where this technology is headed. She joins us now. Joanna, what's so great about the Ray Ban Meta smart glasses?

[Amazon Representative]

How do I list the things I love about these? Look, it's pretty simple. These are just sunglasses with a camera, mic and speakers. It's they're sort of dumb smart glasses because they don't do that much. There's no screen in them, they're not showing you anything. But you can hear things in your ear and you can take pictures with them. And for me, I have just become obsessed with taking these out in the world, especially when I'm with my kids on the weekends or on vacations because I don't have to hold a phone in front of my face to always take a video or a photo. And that's the number one thing I really love about these glasses is you just are seeing the world through regular sunglass lenses, but you're also able to just say, hey Meta, take a picture or take a video.

[Danny Lewis]

So you've tested a lot of face computers this year, including the Apple Vision Pro mixed reality headset. What makes a pair of slightly techy sunglasses better, in your opinion?

[Amazon Representative]

Look, these are two different products, but what makes them similar is we're putting a computer on our face. And all the big tech companies are obsessed with making a world where we wear these computers on our face. And the question for me has always been, why do we want to wear the computer on our face? With the Meta Ray Bans, they've convinced me it makes sense to put this thing on my face. In fact, the beginning of the column I talk about this experience where I forgot them. I forgot them when I went mini golfing with my kids and I was really upset. Like, I got there, I was like, ugh, how am I gonna, how am I gonna take photos of my kids? How am I gonna do this? It's changed that habit. And so that's one of the things that really sold me on this idea of Smart glasses, because I wasn't totally sure we wanted to put these things on our face. And then earlier in the year, I did review the Apple Vision Pro and I had a similar question. Why would I want to put something like this on my face? It's big. It's really just big. I mean, that's my biggest complaint about it. It's expensive, but let's just pretend it didn't cost money right now. What would I do with it? And I discovered with that one really interesting use case was cooking where I could see digital information overlaid in my world. And that's what Apple's trying to do with its Vision Pro. And that's what everyone is really trying to do in this industry, is get to a place where we can have glasses that show us digital information in our line of sight that is overlaid in the real world. And so that is what Meta's trying to do. That is what Apple's trying to do. Apple took it in one direction with this Vision Pro. Meta's also tried to do similar with their Quest headsets. But I also got to get a look recently at something that Meta's doing, which is a prototype because it's not ready yet. But it gives you a real glimpse of what might happen when we get this technology that those big headsets have into a smaller design that looks closer to regular glasses.

[Danny Lewis]

You tested the Meta Orion. That's an augmented reality eyewear prototype. What does that look like?

[Amazon Representative]

So this is a complete prototype for Meta. They are not shipping this, but they wanted to give people a sense of where they were at right now in this journey of making smart glasses. And these are glasses that look like pretty average glasses, like the glasses you're wearing now, but chunkier. It's not perfect in terms of design, but they're real lenses versus what you have on the Vision Pro or with the Meta Quest headsets is those are actually screens in there that you're looking at here. You're looking at real lenses through the world like you would with normal glasses. But there's a holographic display in there, and it is projecting a digital interface over your real world. So I put on these glasses. I see a app menu. I'm able to then use my hands. It actually uses this special neural band. You put it on your wrist and its sensors are tracking your muscle movements. So you can actually just pinch in the air to select things, move your hands around. Your hand is basically the mouse and you're able to see things. I was able to browse the Web. So my big takeaway here was these are not ready. In fact, you can listen to me, ask Alex Himmel, who's the head of wearables at Meta, how much they cost.

[Danny Lewis]

Those cost thousands of dollars each to make. I mean, the main reason that we're not launching that right now is we want to dial in the manufacturing and bring down the cost so that they're easier to scale and more affordable. We want them to be comparable to, you know, high end phones and laptops when they come on sale. What is the signal for where AR technology is headed next?

[Amazon Representative]

What we're really at is two extremes right now. We're with these kind of dumb smart glasses, these Ray bans that cost $300 and they're really fun and anyone can go and buy and use, but you don't get a ton of information in your real world to this really other big extreme where it's literally big, big bulky headsets that are expensive and they're very powerful and they show you this digital interface in your real world. And that is what we've got with the Vision Pro and the Meta Quest. And that's the two ends we're at right now. Orion is what's in the middle here. That's what these companies are trying to get to. Of course they're going to want them to be smaller and more stylish, but what they're trying to get to is a normal looking pair of glasses with lenses where you can actually see digital info in your real world. And that's a ways off. And there's a few reasons for that. But I also did ask Meta about that as well and how they plan to get there.

[Danny Lewis]

There's a number of advances. Obviously the biggest difference between these is the display. There's no display in these. So we have a pretty substantial investment in different display technologies that we're parallel pathing and we'll bring multiple technologies and sizes and form factors to market in our roadmap.

[Amazon Representative]

And so while Orion is pretty far away and you've now heard him say they're going to be working on these other types of devices, I reported that Meta is going to release in 2025 a pair of Ray Bans or something similar to Ray Bans with a small screen inside the lens, it won't be as advanced as Orion, but it will be a step towards it. And in fact, after I posted the article, Mark Zuckerberg responded and said, quote, next year is a big year for Meta glasses.

[Danny Lewis]

That was our senior personal tech columnist, Joanna Stern. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. Today's show was produced by Julie Chang. I'm your host. Danny Lewis, Jessica Fenton and Michael Lavalle wrote our theme music. Our supervising producer is Kathryn Milsob. Our development producer is Aisha Al Muslim. Scott Salloway and Chris Zinsley are the deputy editors, and Falana Patterson is the Wall Street Journal's head of news Audio. We'll be back this afternoon with TNB Techman. Thanks for listening.

[Amazon Representative]

Amazon Q Business is the new Generative AI Assistant from aws because many tasks can make business slow, as if wading through mud help. Luckily, there's a faster, easier, less messy choice. Amazon Q can securely understand your business data and use that knowledge to streamline tasks. Now you can summarize quarterly results or do complex analysis in no time. Q Got this? Learn what Amazon Q Business can do for [e-mail] learn more.