Meta is updating its Ray-Ban smart glasses with new hands-free functionality, the company announced on Wednesday. Most notably, users can now share an image from their smart glasses directly to their Instagram Story without needing to take out their phone.
After you take a photo with the smart glasses, you can say, “Hey Meta, share my last photo to Instagram.” Or you can say, “Hey Meta, post a photo to Instagram” to take a new photo in the moment.
The launch of the new feature is reminiscent of the Snap Spectacles, which debuted in 2016 and allowed users to capture photos and videos with their smart glasses to share them directly to their Snapchat Stories.
Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses are also getting hands-free integrations with Amazon Music and meditation app Calm.
Users can now stream music from Amazon Music without having to take out their phone by saying “Hey Meta, play Amazon Music.” You can also control your audio playback with touch or voice controls while your phone stays in your pocket.
To access the new hands-free Calm integration, users can say “Hey Meta, play the Daily Calm” to have mindfulness exercises and self-care content accessible directly through their smart glasses.
In addition, Meta is expanding the number of styles available in 15 countries, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, and parts Europe. The expansion includes the style Skyler in Shiny Chalky Gray with Gradient Cinnamon Pink Lenses; Skyler in Shiny Black with Transitions Cerulean Blue Lenses; and Headliner Low Bridge Fit in Shiny Black with Polar G15 Lenses. The glasses are available on both Meta’s and Ray-Ban’s websites.
The launch of the new features comes a month after the smart glasses got an AI upgrade. Meta rolled out multimodal AI to the smart glasses to enable users to ask questions about what they see. For instance, if you’re seeing a menu in French, the smart glasses could use their built-in camera and Meta AI to translate the text for you.
The idea behind the launch is to allow the smart glasses to act as a personal AI assistant outside of your smartphone, in a way that’s similar to Humane’s AI pin.