AI glasses are becoming a hot topic in the field of technology, and major manufacturers have launched related products, and the market popularity is rising. However, in this boom of cooking oil, do we need to think coldly? From the interactive revolution to the necessity of display technology, to issues such as production capacity, privacy, and application ecology, this article will provide you with a comprehensive and calm perspective to help you better understand the future development direction of AI glasses.
It’s hotter than the heat wave in June, and it’s estimated that only AI glasses are available.
Throughout June, AI glasses have become a hardware category that has attracted the attention of the whole industry. Xiaomi released AI glasses this month, which set off industry-wide attention and discussion, adding fire to this new category; Meta, which sold 2 million AI glasses, launched AI glasses for the sports market with eyewear brand Oakley; Apple’s AI glasses roadmap was also exposed for the first time.
In addition to the actions of these big manufacturers, Rokid, a professional brand in the AR field, is also adding a bundle of firewood to the industry. Although Rokid’s first AI glasses, Rokid Glasses, have rolled off the production line and the first batch of F-size users have also received the goods, the pre-sale volume of 250,000 units is still Rokid’s sweet trouble. Under Rokid’s multiple official accounts, every time a piece of content is updated, a large number of users urging delivery will pour in the comment area.
Behind this sweet trouble, AI glasses have ushered in the outlet, whether it is manufacturer competition or user enthusiasm, it is wave after wave.
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According to data forecasts, global sales of AI smart glasses are expected to reach 5.5 million units in 2025, becoming the next generation of phenomenal interactive terminals. Today, market players are ambitious, and the entire industry is cooking oil.
01 Behind the explosion, there is an interactive revolution
Behind the popularity of AI glasses, a revolution in human-computer interaction is sweeping.
From the recent star products, it can be seen that taking first-person photos and videos is the most experienced feature by many people. In the past, everyone used to hold their mobile phones or cameras to shoot, but many scenes need to be hands-free, such as cycling, party capture, etc.
In addition to taking first-person photos and videos, when we travel overseas, language is often a challenge to overcome.
But now you can wear AI glasses to communicate, and the translated content is broadcast by voice or displayed on the screen in real time, whether you are ordering food in a restaurant or looking at roadside signs, you don’t have to worry about the travel obstacles caused by language barriers.
There are many more similar scenarios. CCTV reporters once tried such a scene with Rokid Glasses, during news interviews, many interviewees will feel nervous and uncomfortable in front of the huge camera, but when it comes to glasses, many people often ignore such a small device, not only the interviewees are more relaxed and natural, but the interview effect is also better.
Breakthroughs in AI capabilities are also a key to the popularity of AI glasses. In the past, some smart glasses products were more like video glasses, more of a recording shooting, and it was difficult to really interact with the real world.
The AI capabilities brought about by large models have completely changed this experience. For example, when you wear AI glasses and ask the fruit stall in front of you which durian you should choose, AI vision will give an answer based on the appearance of the durian.
When you see animals and plants you don’t know, AI glasses can tell you the answer.
Even when shopping in a convenience store, others need to take out their mobile phones, open Alipay, click on the QR code, and you only need to look at it with your glasses, and then say to confirm the payment to complete the payment experience.
Many users who have obtained the machine are also exploring the possibility of using it more. For example, many parents often jump around when tutoring their children’s homework, and wearing AI glasses can identify the problem, and AI will give the steps and answers to solve the problem, which is also a boon for many parents.
It is not difficult to find that a pair of glasses that are only about 50g, with a battery life of five or six hours for light application, can respond to help you through AI at any time, and can take first-person photos and videos.
In the era of feature phones 20 years ago, people interacted through buttons; By the era of smartphones 10 years ago, touch interaction brought about revolutionary changes in experience. Nowadays, with the gradual maturity of voice and visual interaction, a new generation of interactive terminals is also approaching reality step by step.
02 AI glasses, do you want to have a display?
At present, players in the industry can be roughly divided into several types according to their products: one is the solution without display but with a camera like Meta Ray-Ban and Xiaomi, the second is a solution with a display but no camera, and the third is a solution that uses AI+AR such as Rokid Glasses, which both perceives the physical world and AR display to provide users with more information interaction.
Solutions without display can make costs and power consumption lower, but they also bring limitations and disadvantages, including incoherent experience and limited scenes.
Take taking photos and videos, which are the most frequently used in daily use, for example, because there is no display, it is difficult for users to know whether the current picture is positive or crooked. Although the current optical waveguide solution will not directly present the final shooting effect on the eyes, it can allow users to clearly know the center of the vision and avoid crooked shooting.
In the eyes of the industry, AI glasses without display are more like a compromise solution in the early stages of industry development. At this stage, it saves costs, improves battery life, and also reduces the difficulty of mass production of products.
However, the outside world generally believes that the future will evolve in the direction of AI+AR, and AR provides AI with a display carrier for the integration of virtual and real. In other words, making AI visible is good AI, which can better adapt to the needs of multiple scenarios.
In fact, many of the usage scenarios of AI glasses mentioned above point to a point, if you want AI to have a better experience in the physical world, voice interaction alone is not enough, and many scenarios are still inseparable from the combination of AI and AR.
For example, the newly launched navigation agent (NaviAgent) based on smart glasses launched by Rokid and AutoNavi Maps can see the value displayed in application scenarios. Compared with simple voice broadcasting, AR can present more key information, including ground-to-ground guidance lines and scene-based turning stands, allowing users to easily find their way in complex environments.
For example, the same simultaneous interpretation function, AI glasses without display, can only rely on voice broadcasting, the efficiency of receiving information is low, and it is easy to be interfered with by the outside world.
AR display solutions can present this information in front of you without waiting for the voice to read it. As we all know, the eyes are much more efficient at obtaining information than the ears, and more than 80% of human information acquisition comes from vision.
At the beginning of this year, a speech video of Rokid CEO Zhu Mingming went viral, when he wore Rokid Glasses to achieve an off-script speech. For social phobia people like him, the AI glasses with displays not only avoid the stiffness of reading the manuscript, but also do not have to worry about forgetting words nervously, and the content of the speech can be suspended in front of the eyes without being easily noticed by the outside world.
Obviously, the function of speech teleprompter is currently impossible to achieve with AI glasses without display. Not long ago, CCTV hosts also specially experienced this function of Rokid Glasses, and even the AI speech recognition system can capture the change in the speaker’s speech speed, when suddenly accelerating, deliberately slowing down or even skipping reading, the text scrolling can be seamlessly synchronized, and the whole process is very silky.
“We think the AR display function is a very important part. It is equivalent to this AI glasses that allow people and large models to have the ability to observe the world at the same time. Wang Junjie, vice president of Rokid, said, but the superposition of these functions will greatly increase the difficulty of product development and mass production.
However, the display space of AI glasses is still relatively small, and green light will also appear at certain angles. However, in the eyes of the industry, as the optical machine becomes smaller and smaller, the display area becomes larger and larger, and it will be possible to achieve more application scenarios.
Previously, a user used Rokid Glasses to make a video of playing mahjong, which recorded everyone’s cards and then used AI to calculate the probability of each card being fired. Although this is a post-rendered video, it also provides an interesting and huge imagination space for the outside world.
With the opening up of more software and hardware ecosystems in the future, the interactive experience of AI+AR will be richer, and the visible AI will also provide a more comfortable and colorful experience than simple AI voice assistants.
03 In addition to production capacity, what other problems need to be solved?
Despite the buzz in the market, the general view in the industry is that AI glasses are still in their infancy. One of the most intuitive feelings is that with the rise of user enthusiasm, the production capacity of AI glasses has encountered a lot of challenges.
Compared with mature electronic products such as mobile phones, AI glasses, as a new category, are facing the problem of climbing the industrial chain. Since the end of last year, the industry has set off a war of 100 mirrors, and dozens of manufacturers have released AI glasses one after another, but there are not many products that have been mass-produced and listed, and many are still in the PPT stage.
This also means that whether it is product maturity or supply chain capabilities, AI glasses still have a lot of lessons to make.
Rokid Glasses has been attracting a lot of attention since its release, and Zhu Mingming bluntly said that he was under a lot of pressure. Especially compared with AI glasses without displays, AI+AR glasses with optical waveguide functions, such as Rokid Glasses, will be more difficult in terms of process and mass production.
In addition to the problem of production capacity, AI glasses as a new thing, the experience of the product itself may also have some deviations from users’ expectations.
For example, video shaking, although today’s products have added AI anti-shake algorithms, after all, it is difficult to avoid shaking when worn on the head, especially in poor lighting at night, this problem will be more obvious. However, from the actual experience of users, the photos and videos taken by AI glasses are completely sufficient for posting in Moments.
In addition, battery life has always been a problem that AI glasses and even all XR devices are anxious and troubled by. On the one hand, glasses are required to be as lightweight as possible to achieve long-term wear; But on the other hand, the volume of less than 50g means that it is difficult to put down the high-capacity battery, and the contradiction of battery life will exist for a long time.
At present, including Meta’s products, it is generally only possible to record for about an hour continuously. and products with optical waveguide displays with lenses increase power consumption.
However, the industry is already looking for ways to increase the battery life of its products, such as equipped with rechargeable glasses cases. Rokid has even launched capsule batteries. This capsule-shaped battery, which weighs less than 10g, can be magnetically attached directly to the temples, which will neither bring much burden nor affect the aesthetics. The battery life of the capsule battery will be increased to three times the original level, and the battery life can also be extended by 2-3 hours in high-power consumption scenarios such as live broadcasting.
Another major problem is that the computing power of AI glasses is limited, and it basically relies on cloud large models. Many users have reported that the AI capabilities of some AI glasses on the market are not good, such as the AI assistant does not respond in time during conversations, or the recognition of objects is inaccurate, etc., and users cannot call mature large model products on the market.
This is not a problem for many start-up companies with AI glasses, because it does not involve the development of basic models, and open cooperation with third-party large models can provide users with more diverse choices.
For example, the setting interface of Rokid Glasses provides a variety of large models including Tongyi Qianwen, Doubao, DeepSeek, and Zhipu, and users can set different basic models and visual models to ensure that different tasks can output the best results. Moreover, the content output by AI is optimized on the glasses side, and will not be long-winded, but will only display the core information and conclusions.
In addition, AI glasses are also facing problems such as privacy security and imperfect application ecology. In short, the excitement of the market is driving the industry to mature, but both manufacturers and users should have a clearer understanding of the current situation of the industry.
Objectively speaking, any revolutionary product has many shortcomings in the early stage, from computers to smartphones, it has gone through long-term iteration and evolution, and finally matured step by step. This also means that users need to be more inclusive.
The capabilities of AI glasses have actually been accelerating iteration, such as Zhu Mingming’s popular speech at the beginning of the year, turning pages still relies on rings, but the delivered products have realized AI’s intelligent teleprompting and page turning.
In the past decade, XR has experienced many rounds of ups and downs, and with the integration of AI capabilities and the improvement of product lightweight over the years, the industry has once again placed high hopes on it, at least allowing the outside world to see that AI glasses are not just toys for geeks or early adopters, but can really bring convenience and cool experience to people in real life.
