In a flash and you missed it, Google teased what appears to be its upcoming Smart Glasses project, one that it may be building with help from Samsung and perhaps even Qualcomm.
You could be forgiven for not lasting until the end of Google I/O’s three-hour keynote to see a Gemini AI promotional video that ran through many of the major announcements. It was a lot to digest, but in all the clips there was a glimpse of glasses that were almost undeniably smart.
Google and Samsung are already rumored to be working on an XR/VR headset, but smartglasses like these, which would likely rely on Qualcomm’s much smaller and more efficient Snapdragon AR2 chip, also seem plausible.
In the video (see the GIF below), someone picked up a pair of chunky-looking glasses with black frames. Although we never see them on someone’s face, it is followed by what appears to be someone’s point of view through the lenses.
The wearer asks what they are looking at, which appears to be a drawing on a whiteboard of a pair of cats: one alive and one dead. The AI answers with voice and with text that we can see in front of us: “Schrödinger’s cat.”
Of course, we don’t know if the image is real and if Google really plans to deliver smart glasses with built-in AR screens. We don’t see that with competitors like Meta (Ray-Bay Meta Wayfarers) and Amazon (Amazon Echo Frames).
Yet Google has a rich history in the field of AR glasses. Google Glass (RIP) had a small heads-up display designed to overlay your real world. The display was too small and anyone wearing it looked ridiculous, but that technology is now ten years old. It’s 2024 and there are new possibilities for chips, AR, microdisplays and the AI that can power them.
That, of course, is the key to Google Smart Glass’s potential success: integrated Gemini AI (like Gemini Nano) that can make them much more useful than Google Glass ever was.
We know nothing more than what those few seconds of video tell us. Maybe we’ll have the full story tomorrow when Google launches Google I/O Keynote: The Return.