Meta just proved the thesis I outlined when the Gen 2 glasses launched: the hardware stays put, and the software gets smarter. A major update rolling out this week gives Meta AI multimodal capabilities on the Ray-Ban Meta glasses. You can now ask the AI what it sees through the camera and get useful answers. Point at a pineapple: is it ripe? Point at a menu in another language: translate it. The glasses are looking at the world for you.
Software as the upgrade cycle
This is a fundamentally different business model from a hardware refresh. The same AR1 Gen 1 chip that shipped in September can now do things it could not at launch because the AI processing happens in the cloud and the glasses are the camera and microphone. Meta is also adding hands-free WhatsApp and Messenger video calling, which is a real use case, not a demo. And there is a limited-edition Scuderia Ferrari colorway, which is a smart brand extension into a different kind of aspirational consumer.
The trend for the year ahead
The glasses market now runs two parallel races: the hardware race (lighter, cheaper, better optics) and the AI race (whose assistant is smarter through the same pair of lenses). Meta has a structural advantage in the second race because it controls the AI, the social graph, and the glasses. Expect competitors to scramble for partnerships that give them access to at least two of those three.
The multimodal update is the moment the Ray-Ban Meta glasses stop being a camera you wear and start becoming an assistant you consult. The hardware is unchanged. The value proposition has effectively doubled. Meta is building a software moat around the glasses one update at a time, and the AR1 chip has enough headroom to keep going for at least another year without new hardware.
Part of Two Decades of XR, my running diary of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality.