We tried Google’s AI glasses and they’re almost there

At the Google I/O developer conference this week, we had the opportunity for a brief hands-on with Google’s upcoming AI-powered glasses — not the audio-only glasses that the company said will begin shipping this fall but rather the glasses that offer a combined audio and visual experience. First announced at last year’s event, these Android XR glasses offer an in-lens display that puts helpful information in front of you, overlaid on top of the real world. This includes widgets that could display things like the weather, walking directions, Uber pickup details, live translation, and more — even widgets you designed yourself using AI. The glasses will also pair with iOS and Android phones, the company noted, both in the audio-only format and in the future display version. The eyewear with the display is meant to be the next step beyond the first generation of audio glasses coming out later this year. The glasses were developed in partnership with Warby Parker, Gentle Monster, and Samsung, blending Google’s technology with their brands’ design aesthetics. The glasses we tested, meanwhile, were still very much a prototype, although one polished enough to now be tested externally. The reps demoing the XR glasses explained that the prototype allowed Google to not worry about some of the cosmetic details related to different styles and shapes, so it could instead focus on experimenting with the display technology more freely and its impacts on battery life. That means these spectacles are very different from any future shipping version of glasses, in terms of fit, shape, dimensions, and attention to detail. Rather, it’s more like being able to experiment with the “insides” of the glasses, while still in a basic, comfortable frame. The shipping version of the glasses will be able to detect when the glasses are placed on your head and taken off, but the ones we tried didn’t have this feature. Image Credits:Google To activate Gemini, you perform a two-second press on the right side of the glasses’ frame. A startup chime sounds, letting you know that Gemini is on and listening. In the demo version, starting Gemini also starts the camera at the same time, but the shipping version will allow the user to configure whether they want to turn on the camera when Gemini starts. In an initial test, we played music via the glasses by asking Gemini to play a favorite artist. The venue was too noisy to evaluate the sound quality, unfortunately, as the music was dialed up to the maximum volume and was still relatively hard to hear crisply and in detail. But the initial impression from this limited experience was that the glasses would not be a great substitute for higher-quality earbuds, though they would do if you just wanted some music while you were outside, walking, hiking, or doing chores around the house. The advantage of not having earbuds in is that you can more easily hear someone talking, compared with the transparency mode experiences on devices like Apple’s AirPods. To turn the music off, tap once on the side of the frame, around the middle, as if tapping on your temple. Image Credits:Google In the second test, we pressed the photo capture button to take a photo of a person. The display was off, so the picture was transferred to our phone and watch. (You’ll later be able to capture video with a long press, but this option was not available to test with the prototype. In the case of video, you would see a video thumbnail preview instead of a photo.) You can also simply ask Gemini to take a photo without having to press the photo button, and perform some sort of AI manipulation on the result. For instance, you can say something like, “Take a photo and turn the person into an anime character.” The photo is sent to the phone, then to the Gemini and Nano Banana servers, and then returns in its edited version. At the Google I/O venue, where Wi-Fi was under a heavy load, the round-trip took around 45 seconds. With the display enabled, you’ll see a simple home screen appear in your field of view. The demo version had some widgets preloaded that showed the weather and a countdown to Google’s I/O event. You could also build quick launchers into specific apps, like Google Maps or Translate, if those were among your main use cases for the glasses. The prototype had just one display over the right eye, but the platform can support both single and dual displays, as well as audio-only glasses. The image itself was a little fuzzy, but we chalked this up to our prescription contacts, which involve wearing one lens optimized for distance on one side, and one optimized for near vision on the other. When we closed one eye, the image came into better focus, but the experience almost immediately left us with some eye strain above the right eye, and it’s unclear if the prescription was entirely to blame. One of the best demos was of the language translation experience on the glasses, which is backed by the Google Translate app on the phone.