Is There a Market for Meta's Ray-Ban Display Smart Glasses? (How About the Blind?) (msn.com) 22
It's not just glitches at the launch of the Meta Ray-Ban Display smart glasses... The New York Times remains skeptical of its market share:
[Meta's] smart glasses remain a niche. As of February, Meta had sold about two million of its $300 Ray-Ban Meta camera glasses since their 2023 debut, and it hopes to sell 10 million annually by the end of 2026, which is a tiny amount for a company this size. In the last decade, Meta has spent over $100 billion on its virtual and augmented reality division, which includes its smart glasses and is not profitable. Last quarter, the division reported a $4.5 billion loss, nearly the same as a year ago.
"Meta's Smart Glasses Might Make You Smarter. They'll Certainly Make You More Awkward," joked a recent Wired headline.
But the Wall Street Journal does report there's "a growing group of blind users... finding the devices to be more of a life-enhancing tool than a cool accessory." Jonathan Mosen, executive director at the nonprofit National Federation of the Blind said he'd like to see Meta continue to invest in the glasses. "It's giving significant accessibility benefits at a price point people can afford." He has used them a few times to record video of ride-share drivers refusing to give him and his wife a ride because she travels with a guide dog. Denying rides to people with service animals is illegal in many countries, including the U.S.
Another concern for blind users is that AI assistants in general are prone to making errors, or so-called hallucinations, which may not be apparent. Aaron Preece, who is blind and editor in chief of American Foundation for the Blind's AccessWorld magazine, said Meta's glasses recently failed to correctly read the number on the door to his home. "I just can't trust it," he said. "It's more of a novelty than something I'd use on a day-to-day basis."
When it comes to innovative technology, CNET seems more excited about Meta's display-controlling "neural wristband" accessory. Instead of camera-based hand tracking, these muscle-sensing bands "can register gestural moves like pinches, taps, thumb swipes, and maybe even typing over time..."
"Meta's Smart Glasses Might Make You Smarter. They'll Certainly Make You More Awkward," joked a recent Wired headline.
But the Wall Street Journal does report there's "a growing group of blind users... finding the devices to be more of a life-enhancing tool than a cool accessory." Jonathan Mosen, executive director at the nonprofit National Federation of the Blind said he'd like to see Meta continue to invest in the glasses. "It's giving significant accessibility benefits at a price point people can afford." He has used them a few times to record video of ride-share drivers refusing to give him and his wife a ride because she travels with a guide dog. Denying rides to people with service animals is illegal in many countries, including the U.S.
Another concern for blind users is that AI assistants in general are prone to making errors, or so-called hallucinations, which may not be apparent. Aaron Preece, who is blind and editor in chief of American Foundation for the Blind's AccessWorld magazine, said Meta's glasses recently failed to correctly read the number on the door to his home. "I just can't trust it," he said. "It's more of a novelty than something I'd use on a day-to-day basis."
When it comes to innovative technology, CNET seems more excited about Meta's display-controlling "neural wristband" accessory. Instead of camera-based hand tracking, these muscle-sensing bands "can register gestural moves like pinches, taps, thumb swipes, and maybe even typing over time..."
No! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The ultimate spy tool (Score:5, Informative)
They're the ultimate spy tool that will allow Meta to see exactly what you do every minute of every day. They won't need to guess anymore. And you can be absolutely sure they're going to sell this information to anyone who asks.
Re:The ultimate spy tool (Score:4, Interesting)
They're the ultimate spy tool that will allow Meta to see exactly what you do every minute of every day. They won't need to guess anymore. And you can be absolutely sure they're going to sell this information to anyone who asks.
That's not the problem. Serious Facebook users are likely monitored sufficiently by their phones which get activated whenever they do something interesting. The thing is that now, because these will be always on cameras, these will be able to monitor everyone else as well. There's the real market. Google is evil, for sure, but kind of lawful-evil. Google would recognize that someone else's conversation, recorded with google glass, was really that person's data and couldn't be used for marketing. Facebook will now have a little dialog "share camera output a) never b) when application requests c) all the time". The same people that dump everything on facebook will pick c) every time and facebook will view that as giving them permission to share everything you see with their advertising partners.
This is a really big problem. Facebook is willing to break at least the spirit of the law, even if their lawyers will manage to get the courts to declare what they do legal. That means they can get a whole load of money for products like this that other companies, even Google, can't access. The blind are rightly not going to care. Nobody else is willing to put in the effort to solve their problems and those that understand will simply opt for a) or b). The "always choose accept" Facebook users won't take any notice of privacy issues until they get some serious penalties.
Re:The ultimate spy tool (Score:4, Insightful)
My good-faith advice to anyone who is considering letting zuck into their refrigerator just to solve the crushing problem of what to cook with available ingredients or whatever would be "probably not worth it"; but that's ultimately a them problem one way or the other.
The trouble is that much of the pitch here is that you are supposed to provide footage as you wander around; merrily making the you problem everyone else's problem as you do so. And, yes, 'no expectation of privacy, etc, etc.' but there's a fairly obvious distinction between "in principle, it wouldn't be illegal to hire a PI to follow you around with a camera while you are in public", which involves a typically prohibitive cost in practice and "you paid them to upload geolocated footage, nice going asshole", where the economics of surveillance change pretty radically.
If people want to outource their thinking to facebook themselves I'd have to be feeling fairly paternalistic to intervene; but given that the normalization of these is, pretty explicitly, about facebook having eyes on everyone I can only hope that 'glasshole' continues to be a genuine social risk to any adopters.
Re: The ultimate spy tool (Score:2)
Proctologist more like. He can kiss my arse.
Seems like it should be close to useful... (Score:5, Interesting)
For deaf, since one of the features is captioning a speaker.
On the one hand, I know all too well that the AI will screw it up some.
However, if you watch closed captioning, you know that the captions are already frequently messed up, long before even AI was a possible strategy. Usually the live captioned stuff had lower quality, but you'd see it in scripted shows too.
I also wonder about the converse, captioning someone using sign language for those that don't know it.
But that FOV is just so tiny....
Re: (Score:2)
Having used machine translation for years, I am well aware that it screws up. Even so, it's very useful and you get used to the mistakes it makes and learn to interpret them.
That said Google's English transcription is better than a human now, and IME is close to flawless. Meta's is probably a lot worse, but the potential is there.
Not fit for medical professionals (Score:5, Interesting)
I've seen a number of medical consultant and doctors use smart glasses at work before while gathering sensitive medical information, seeing naked bodies or just looking at medical records. This should not be happening.
Re: (Score:2)
I've seen a number of medical consultant and doctors use smart glasses at work before while gathering sensitive medical information, seeing naked bodies or just looking at medical records. This should not be happening.
That's addressing the wrong problem. Even if the doctor themselves weren't using the products, the security guard or cleaner or even just a lost patient can have to come into the room when they are doing something. That's normally handled by the doctor ordering the person out immediately and the person acting embarrassed and not reporting what they saw. Now Facebook will have the whole recording and anything the camera saw, even for one frame, is recorded and available forever.
These products should be force
Re: (Score:2)
A ha ha ha ha!!! AHH HA HA HA HA HA!!!!
Oh wait, you're serious?
Niche Uses (Score:3)
My son's coach uses them to clip best-of videos and pictures for the end of team dinner. When his game is on the coach turns on constant recording and tells it to clip stuff when he sees something cool happen.
It's a niche use case, but the resulting clips are great. He would otherwise have to be fiddling with a camera or phone while the game is on, which is cumbersome, and he's got better things to do.
Re: (Score:2)
This sounds like the (niche) example given in TFS about the blind guy getting refused taxi service. It's great that there's a way to record such incidents, but I'd imagine you could do so for a lot less than the $800 price. It strikes me that a small camera, with an SD card or similar attached to some glasses (or some other worn item, I guess) would solve for both use-cases quite happily. I dare say the Chinese could manufacture something like that for about $20.
So as I say, it's great someone's found their
Wearables ... not for me (Score:3)
I'm not selling my soul to Meta, so I'm never going to get them.
Also, have an unusual prescription to correct my vision ... so probably won't be supported.
I'm sure these are solutions in search of a problem. Really, just cannot see a compelling use case. Driving, we have HUD. I can only think remote support diagnostic. There is a hands on, on-site but not a subject matter expert. Think Antarctic station or Space level remote.
"This god damn pod bay door won't open"
"Have you tried turning off your HAL-9000 and on again?"
For only $300 (Score:3)
No (Score:2)
Hard to say; what standards do they support? (Score:2)
Can you use the hardware without any Meta services? Can you use competing hardware with Meta's services? And then beyond just services, can you fully replace the whole software stack?
Any "no"s above will make the utility dubious, such that there's little point in spending much time getting to know the product (except for RE purposes). OTOHs "yes"s will indicate that these types of wearables are starting to become viable.
I'm not buying anything connected to meta... (Score:2)
They already sell me as a product, why would I give them additional funds so they can learn more about me and sell me at a higher price?
Do I want augmented reality? Absolutely. I've wanted them for years and see the value in auto facial recognition, heads up data and navigational details, auto recording things that happen so I don't wish later on I had actually recorded something, ...
But not for a wickedly evil company like Meta, no way in hell.
Only on Slashdot (Score:2)
Is There a Market for Meta's Ray-Ban Display Smart Glasses? (How About the Blind?)
The blind do not want or need to be paying for a display they can't use. The non-display parts of the functionality may be compelling, but they need the device to speak to them, not to show them pictures they cannot see. Who fucking writes this shit?