The news: Meta upgraded its Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses with live translations, Shazam support, and a live AI assistant. The features are rolling out now in the US and Canada.

• The translation option lets the smart glasses interpret Spanish, French, or Italian into English either spoken via the glasses’ microphone or read as a transcript on a connected phone.
• The assistant, which brings visual recognition to the glasses’ Meta AI, can converse with users and provide answers or suggestions.

A readily available agent: These additions build on previous features by offering an agent that can find information and remember details from prior conversations. Meta said that, in the future, the AI could offer suggestions without being prompted.

• Meta AI is able to view users’ actions and surroundings in real time to provide ideas—for example, recipes from ingredients the user is looking at in their kitchen.
• This transforms the glasses past being a simple “do this, do that” tool for sending messages and playing music into a more fluid hands-free assistant.

Zooming out: The market for augmented reality (AR) headsets, including glasses like Meta’s, is set to reach $5.34 billion in 2028, up from $1.86 billion in 2023, per ARTillery Intelligence.

That growth is in stark contrast to the rest of the wearables sector: Global shipments of wearables are expected to decrease 3.9% YoY in 2025, per IDC.

The drawback: The Ray-Ban glasses’ AI assistant can only operate for about 30 minutes at a time on a full charge. That becomes limiting when a user is away from a charger.

The short battery life for demanding tasks points to challenges that small devices, like smart glasses, can face, as their compact form factor restricts both processing power and energy capacity.

Key takeaway: If Meta can extend the AI assistant’s battery life, the glasses could become indispensable. This puts pressure on competitors to either innovate faster or risk falling behind.

Meta could bring in more revenue if it lets brands offer product recommendations or targeted content directly through the glasses, similar to how Google integrates ads into search results, though this could alienate some users.

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