At the Google I/O developer conference this week, we had the opportunity to take a brief look at Google’s upcoming AI-powered glasses – not the audio-only glasses that the company announced would start shipping this fall, but rather the glasses that offer a combined audio and visual experience.
Introducing Google’s AI-Powered Glasses
First announced at last year’s event, these Android XR glasses offer an in-lens screen that puts useful information in front of you, overlaid on the real world. This includes widgets that can display things like weather, walking directions, Uber pick-up details, live translation, and more, and even widgets that you designed yourself using AI.
Image credits:Andrej Sokolow/photo alliance (opens in a new window) /Getty Images
Compatibility and Design
The glasses will also come with iOS and Android phones, the company said, both in the audio-only format and in the future display version.
Glasses with a display are supposed to be the next step beyond the first generation of audio glasses that will be released later this year. The glasses were developed in partnership with Warby Parker, Gentle Monster and Samsung, combining Google’s technology with their brands’ design aesthetics.
The lenses we tested, meanwhile, were still only a prototype, although polished enough to now be tested externally. Representatives demoing the XR Glasses explained that the prototype allowed Google to not worry about certain cosmetic details related to different styles and shapes, so it could instead focus on more freely experimenting with display technology and its impacts on battery life. This means that these glasses are very different from any future glasses release, in terms of fit, shape, dimensions and attention to detail. It’s more about being able to experience the “inside” of the glasses, while remaining in a basic and comfortable frame.
The shipping version of the glasses will be able to detect when the glasses are placed on your head and removed, but the ones we tried didn’t have this feature.
Image credits:Google
Activating Gemini and Initial Impressions
To activate Gemini, you press for two seconds on the right side of the glasses frame. A startup chime will sound, letting you know that Gemini is on and listening. In the demo version, starting Gemini also starts the camera at the same time, but the shipping version will allow the user to configure whether they want to turn on the camera when starting Gemini.
In a first test, we played music through the glasses by asking Gemini to play a favorite artist. Unfortunately, the room was too noisy to assess sound quality, as the music was set at maximum volume and was still relatively difficult to hear clearly and in detail. But the first impression from this limited experience was that the glasses wouldn’t make a great substitute for higher-quality headphones, although they would if you just wanted to listen to music while you were outside, walking, hiking, or doing household chores. The benefit of not having headphones is that you can more easily hear someone speaking, compared to transparency mode experiences on devices like Apple’s AirPods.
To turn off the music, tap once on the side of the frame, in the middle, as if you were tapping your temple.
Image credits:Google
Photography and AI Features
In the second test, we pressed the photo capture button to take a photo of a person. The screen was off, so the photo transferred to our phone and watch. (You will later be able to capture a video with a long press, but this option was not available to test with the prototype. In the case of a video, you would see a thumbnail preview of the video instead of a photo.)
You can also simply ask Gemini to take a photo without having to press the photo button and perform some sort of AI manipulation on the result. For example, you can say something like “Take a photo and turn the person into an anime character.” » The photo is sent to the phone, then to the Gemini and Nano Banana servers, then returns in its edited version.
At Google I/O, where Wi-Fi was under heavy load, the round trip took about 45 seconds.
Image credits:Andrej Sokolow/photo alliance (opens in a new window) /Getty Images
Display and Navigation Experience
With the display enabled, you will see a simple home screen appear in your field of vision. The demo version came with preloaded widgets that showed the weather and a countdown to Google’s I/O event. You can also create quick launchers in specific apps, like Google Maps or Translate, if those were among your primary use cases for Glasses.
The prototype only had a single display over the right eye, but the platform can support both single and dual displays, as well as audio-only glasses. The image itself was a little blurry, but we attributed that to our prescription lenses, which involve wearing a distance-optimized lens on one side and a near-optimized lens on the other. When we closed one eye, the image became sharper, but the experience almost immediately left us with some eye strain above the right eye, and it’s unclear whether the prescription was entirely to blame.
Image credits:Andrej Sokolow/photo alliance (opens in a new window) /Getty Images
Language Translation and Object Identification
One of the best demonstrations was of the language translation experience on the glasses, supported by the Google Translate app on the phone. One of the protesters spoke rapid Spanish, and the glasses automatically detected the language and displayed English text on the screen, while Gemini spoke English into our ear. We might see travelers from all over the world buying the glasses just for this experience.
It’s worth noting that Translate will also work on audio-only glasses, without the text being displayed on the glasses. Instead, you could see the transcription on the phone, if necessary, in addition to real-time audio feedback.
Navigation and Object Recognition
Another demo involved using the glasses to navigate. While we obviously couldn’t walk around and leave the room to test its accuracy, we could get an idea of how it worked. You can start the Google Maps experience by asking Gemini to navigate to a destination, which can even be as vague as something like “nearest coffee shop.”
Gemini will enable Google Maps on the phone, and after a brief delay while the experience loads, the glasses will display step-by-step directions. When you look forward, your next turn information will be displayed. But if you need to orient yourself in space, look at the ground to see your blue dot on a map. You can also turn left and right to rotate in space, just like you would try to get the blue dot to point in the right direction on your phone.
Then, when you raise your head, you can continue walking without the map getting in the way.
Since the experience is tied to Google Maps on your phone, saved destinations like “home” and “work” will already be available.
Image credits:Google
We were also able to briefly use the glasses to identify various objects in our sight and ask questions about them. The glasses initially had trouble identifying the replica of a Monet painting on a shelf in front of us, but that’s because the prototype didn’t automatically activate the camera: it had to be turned back on from the app. Still, it took a few questions before Gemini said it looked like a Monet even after we moved closer to focus on Monet’s signature at the bottom left.
Other tests were smoother, as the glasses immediately identified the plant on the shelf and answered questions about different recipes from a book. Still, these are things you can do today with Google Lens (or other AI models built into chatbot apps), although we think it’s nice to be able to do them without having to take out your phone.
Upcoming Developments and Future Prospects
Google says it will have more to share about its Android XR Display Glasses later this year when it expands its Trusted Tester program.
Image credits:Google
In the meantime, the company believes that audio will suffice for some users’ needs, which is perhaps a clever way of making it look like it doesn’t have its display bezels ready, despite competition from Meta and Snap on that front.
Like the display version, the audio glasses also provide access to Google’s Gemini AI, which you hear privately through the glasses’ frame speakers. You can do things like listen to music through the glasses, press a button to take a photo, make a call, or access your phone’s apps from these glasses, just as you can on future display versions.
Access to other third-party apps wasn’t one of the things we demoed, but the glasses will allow users to tell Gemini to do things like “take the ingredients from this recipe and add them to my shopping list.”
In another example presented by Google during the event’s keynote, the glasses could see a meal the wearer was preparing on the stove and provide information about the meal, such as whether the meat was already fully cooked.
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