Meta’s New AI App For Phones Is Also Its Hub For Glasses
If you own Meta Ray-Ban glasses, you’ll notice that the app that used to be on your phone is being replaced. Or, rather, changed. The Meta View app has suddenly become Meta AI, as of today, and the shift tells a lot about where Meta’s glasses – and AI in general – is heading.
The change, announced to coincide with Meta’s first standalone AI-centric developer conference called LlamaCon, isn’t surprising at first glance. The new Meta AI app is very much in the vein of Google Gemini, or ChatGPT: launch it and you’ll be able to chat with Meta AI, ask questions, search around for prompt suggestions or viral content, and just use it like a conversational app like all the others. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement via Instagram, adding that Meta AI currently has over a billion active users a month in its other apps, prompting a push to make a standalone AI app.
However, Meta’s also using this app as the main way to pair and manage Ray-Ban glasses. Tabs in the app work just like the previous Meta View app, managing glasses settings, and helping offload photos and videos from the glasses to your phone. That’s a different approach than other companies, but also possibly a sign of how Google and others could approach glasses connection on phones, too.
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AI first, glasses second?
What interests me about the app’s shift is how it’s leaning into AI first, now, whether or not you even own a pair of Ray-Bans. You might find yourself using the app just as a phone tool, which is clearly Meta’s intention. Maybe later on you discover that glasses work with it, too, and you consider a pair of Ray-Bans later.
The glasses now seem like an extension of Meta AI, instead of a product that has Meta AI onboard.
Even though Meta says it’s sold a surprising amount of Ray-Bans already, the number of smart glasses out there will never compete with the number of phones. Meta making a play for another compelling phone app looks like a way to try to draw more people into the ecosystem faster than making a pitch to get glasses.
What about where this meets with VR and AR?
The question this also raises is where Meta AI, and its glasses connection, relates to Meta’s Horizon app and how it connects to Quest VR headsets. The two apps are tremendously different right now. Horizon is about gaming worlds and Meta’s own Horizon avatar-based social hub, without very much AI at the forefront. Meta AI is pushing generative AI chat and camera-aware services on phone and glasses. The two should meet at some point: Meta’s moonshot Orion AR glasses prototype I tried last year show a blend of gaming, AI assistance and 3D graphics on a pair of everyday-ish spectacles, but current Meta glasses don’t even have displays onboard. That should change this fall when Meta’s expected to have a higher-end pair of glasses, possibly $1,000 or more, that have displays and a neural input wristband.
The present for Meta’s glasses is clearly evolving AI features, though, especially as the glasses compete with Google’s in-development Android XR and its own smart glasses. Meta AI, as an app, tells a lot about Meta’s intentions going forward, though: AI is the product, no matter what form it takes.