The Vergecast - How the low-vision community embraced AI smart glasses

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

On this episode of The Vergecast, we’re going to dive deep into why accessible design is universal design. First, guest host Victoria Song will chat with Jason Valley, a visually impaired Verge reader. Jason initially reached out to Victoria after her Live AI hands-on, challenging the notion that the feature was a “solution looking for a problem to solve.” Jason shares how the tech has helped him live a more independent life, what he’s hoping to see improve, and how the blind and low-vision community has enthusiastically embraced the technology. After that, Victoria sits down with Be My Eyes CEO Mike Buckley. Be My Eyes is an app that pairs blind and low-vision users with sighted volunteers to help them go about their day. Buckley gives his thoughts about how accessible tech design benefits everyone, why smart glasses and AI are a natural combo, and what challenges and opportunities in this space remain. And finally, we have features reporter Mia Sato on to answer a spicy question about smart glasses from the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email [e-mail]). Specifically, do smart glasses belong in the bedroom? Further reading: Live AI on Meta’s smart glasses is a solution looking for a problem Meta’s smart glasses can now describe what you’re seeing in more detail The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses actually make the future look cool Be My Eyes AI offers GPT-4-powered support for blind Microsoft customers The principles of wearable etiquette Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of what AI smart glasses are actually good for. I'm your friend V, and we are in week two of Hot Girl Vergecast Summer. Anyway, today's show is really exciting and quite personal for me, actually. A few months ago, I was reviewing the meta smart glasses, and I kind of flippantly commented that I didn't understand why anyone would need AI to give a really obvious description of something that they're looking at. Well, a bunch of visually impaired Verge cast listeners and Verge readers wrote in and said, actually, me, me, I am the person that this helps. And so a few of them actually challenged me to rethink my framing. And I said, you know what, you're right.

Because here at the Verge, we do love good feedback. So today, we are talking about smart glasses and accessibility. And first we'll hear from one of the listeners who wrote into me, and he's going to tell us how the meta-glasses has changed his life for the better. And then I'll talk to the CEO of Be My Eyes. That's a company that provides AI and live volunteer services for people with visual impairments. They're integrated into those smart glasses, and we'll hear about how they're thinking about how this technology can help the visually impaired going forward.

And finally, my colleague Mia Sato, will be joining me to answer a very spicy, potentially not-safe-for-work question, about smart glasses. All that coming up right after the break. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together.

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We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years, covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Do you ever wonder what's in your lotion?

If you look at the back of the bottle, it could contain more than a dozen ingredients. And they may not all be regulated. The threshold is so high that only 11 cosmetic ingredients have been restricted by the FDA since 1938. This week, unexplained it to me, the chemical. chemicals lurking in your cosmetics. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. Our first guest is Jason Valley. He's one of the listeners who wrote into me about how AI smart glasses changed his life. He also sent me a picture of his guide dog, Noel, who is cute as a button, and we'll put a picture of her into the show notes. Let's get into it. So Jason, this is kind of a really

special for me interview because I do read all the reader feedback we get. Maybe not the comments sometimes, but usually if it comes into my email, I definitely try and take time to read it. So when you reached out to me, it was because I had done a hands-on of the meta-AI, live AI feature. And I sort of just kind of posed it in the framing as a solution in search of a problem. I was kind of asking, like, who is asking for this? And you sent such a thoughtful email about, like, hey, I use this tech. This tech actually dramatically impacts my life. So I guess what I wanted to ask you is, like, what drew you to the Meta-Ray bands in the first place?

And, like, can you explain the appeal of Live AI for your life? Live AI is a visual interpreter for me in my life, if it's not something that I can, can perceive with my remaining vision clearly. I need to ask somebody, hey, do you mind telling me what this is? Sometimes that can be a challenge. Not everybody is capable of saying, hey, you know, this is such and such. This is a widget. It's blue. It's round. It's this or it's that. Having the live AI, I can go into environments where I would need a chaperone. That could be a dollar tree. It could be going to a restaurant. And I can engage. Live AI and ask it to read the menu or tell me what's in front of me so that I'm not inconveniencing

my companions and I'm getting on in a normal life. I'm enjoying my lunch. I have a menu that's in front of me that I can actually do something with. It's not just a, I guess, a fan in front of me while everybody else is picking out their stuff. I know what I want. I can decide for myself. And that's kind of a powerful thing. Yeah, that's, you know, that's definitely not something. that I as a cited person would think about because me using that feature, it was very much like a, well, yeah, I can read the thing in front of me. But I think when we talk about blind and low vision people, that is a wide spectrum of, you know, ability to see. So could you maybe describe what your condition is most like so that our listeners understand? Because I think when us cited

people hear blind and low vision, we just, just think of the main image that most people think of, which is someone who can't see at all. Correct. Vision loss in general affects a wide variety of people, from no light perception at all to somebody who has low vision, which I believe is defined as 2060, and that's at a point where a person can no longer drive. In my particular case, I contracted a staff infection in 2015, and it affected. my blood pressure, I had two emergency surgeries to correct it, and it essentially damaged the

retina in the back of my eyes. I had three separate injuries that occurred over the course of a year, and the official diagnosis that I got was N-A-I-O-N, which stands for non-Archoritic ischemic optic neuropathy. What that means to the average person is an optic nerve stroke. And, my retinas, which would normally be in the shape of a volcano where your central vision is a very tightly compacted group of nerve cells in the middle. Mine are entirely flat. So what that translates for me is in my left eye, I have no light perception from about 11 o'clock to about 4 o'clock, and then from 4 o'clock to 7 o'clock in my left eye, I can look at things. If I look at it directly, it disappears, if I look past it with my ascension. vision, I can still perceive it. I can still read things if the text is large enough. If I have it white text on black, it makes it easier to see. In my right eye, I have no central vision.

I have just the periphery. And again, when I look at something, it disappears. But if I look past it with my eccentric vision, eccentric vision, I can see something there. And then everything else, for lack of a better term, is looking through a plastic baggie. Everybody agrees that it's clear, but if you fold it, you really can't see through it at any distance. So for me, I have to be about 8 to 10 inches from a screen with large text for it to be useful to me. In the wild, if I go to a restaurant, let's say a buffet, I really don't want to get my face 8 to 10 inches from the food to see what's there. I think that's kind of disgusting. And there's a reason the sneeze woods are there to keep human contact from your food.

So having the glasses, if I go into this buffet, I can ask it, what's in front of me? Can you read the sign? It'll tell me, okay, well, you have this option in front of you. So I don't have to rely on people with my residual vision in the wild. I can do things for myself. I travel independently with a guide dog. We have a walking lifestyle in my neighborhood, and I have some great friends, which will take me out to do my shopping.

that could be at Lowe's to get supplies that I use for my crafting. It could be a trip to Dollar Tree to get some things that I need. It could be to Albies. That place is easy to shop for. Everything is insane in all the stores. So getting back to the vision part, these places are a challenge for anybody with any level of vision loss. So having these glasses,

having a visual interpreter quietly telling me the things that I need is absolutely a game changer for independence. What brought me to them is some years ago, I'm on my, I guess, 10th year of vision loss, is there's a device out there called ORCAM. That device starts about $3,500. That's rather expensive for a blind person who's on disability. Looking at the price tag for the,

meta when they came out last July, I was able to snag a pair of refurbed ones with a double warranty for $200. I was able to slip in some custom lenses for 65, and I have myself a great working pair of meta glasses. So that's a huge example of cost and something that I think we don't necessarily think of, because you're right, $3,500, that's an Apple Vision Pro level area of price. So, you know, something like the Orby versus the metas, like, was this something that to you was immediately obvious? Like, yes, I need to try this. Yes, this is absolutely worth the investment. No matter, you know, it can be kind of tough with emerging technology where you haven't tried it yourself. You're kind of relying on, for the large part, cited reviewers' impressions of this technology. and I think one thing that us tech reviewers could do better is to think of accessibility needs

to the ability that we are able to when we are reviewing these products. And I'll admit, that was something that I was not necessarily aware of or thinking of when I first reviewed the meta rebounds. So I think if a blind or low vision person was reading my review, they wouldn't get a sense of how this could help them. So I'm curious in your process of knowing. what was available to you before and then reading about this new technology that was coming out, was it immediately apparent to you that

this could be a game changer? The packaging, I guess you could say on what was being pitched offered a lot of wonderful. I started doing some research, looking online, looking at the different options that were there, and I realized

that this was the first option that actually had the AI enabled on it. And I started before a lot of the current options became available. There's been a lot of updates over the last year that have been amazing. And I'm part of the Early Access Program on that. Part of my research involves social media. I'm part of several blind and visually impaired groups.

And these started to show up on the radar and people started talking about them and what it can do and what it can offer. And I've always been an early adopter of technology. and it's like, okay, this is looking like it really wants to fit what I would like it to do. So I started making a plan to get into my budget and got it into my hands in July of last year. And it's been a game changer since then. Right. So, you know, you mentioned that it has enabled you to live and work more independently.

I'm curious if you were ever a user of something like Be My Eyes. That's kind of another example that's come up primarily through smartphones, and it does have an integration with the meta raybans as a type of technology that also helps other people live and work more independently. So I'm curious, like, how does this experience compare to you? Is it complementary? Do you use BMI eyes on the glasses itself? I use BMI eyes on my phone. I'm an iOS user. My primary use of BMI eyes. my eyes is to describe images that I can't pick out the details on. So I can see a rough image of something. If you look at, it's very blurry. So I can run it through the AI and tell me in detail what it is that I'm looking at and pick up the nuances that are there. I haven't really used the volunteer aspect of things to reach out. I'm a little less comfortable talking with somebody

about my medications or some of my day-to-day stuff, having the AI gives me that privacy. So I'm, I guess you could say a hybrid user of BMIIs, but I do have it enabled that if I need to contact a volunteer, I can enable it with a voice command. That's like a really interesting example, because I think when people talk about AI, from the skeptics at least,

a common refrain I hear is like, who is this for? or why would you want this? And this idea that maybe the AI can afford you at least a sense, because we don't know what all these companies do with their data per se, but it can at least afford you a sense in your daily life, a feeling of like, oh, I don't have to have another person see my medication. Is that kind of the main appeal for you for AI versus a volunteer?

Are there certain situations where you might want to talk to a volunteer more than a, AI and how have you found the AI in general when you are in those situations? AI is a bit more concise with the information that I'd like to get. With the meta AI, I'm not able to do some things because of their safety guardrails that they've put on. So I can't discuss a lot of my medications up close with it. I can simply get information off the bottle of the name and that's about it. And then it'll tell me I can't proceed with the right.

rest of the information. I can't describe it. So that is a frustrating point, but in other things, if I need to get instructions for something, I guess, less dangerous, if you will, something that doesn't have a life and safety, it really streamlines my day to get through it. So instead of waiting for somebody else to become available to me, that can say, hey, Jason, you know, this is your electric bill and it says that you owe X amount, I can ask META to, hey, look at this and describe it, and it'll go through and give me the juicy bits.

It'll tell me how much I owe who it's for and when it's due, rather than giving me a complete spitout of everything top to bottom and all the information that I don't need. With a human being, I can get that personal touch, but not everybody is capable of describing something in the way that's useful for me. People can do it in a general sense, but if I really need information, some people will say, well, it's over there. To a blind person, over there is a really open concept,

especially when somebody's pointing and you can get me used to those hand gestures. So I'll ask somebody, you know, hey, could you be a little more specific? oh yeah it's over to your left over there and you know sometimes i'm slapping my forehead you know in frustration and having an i i can kind of drill down on the information that i need so i can ask it please look and describe and it'll tell me okay it is such and such okay well i'd like to know a little bit more what is the information on what text is off there and it'll get into more detail and if it's still not enough, I can ask it, and it's significantly more concise. So I'm getting the information that I need. If I'm in a place I'm not familiar with, I can ask it to read the sign on a bathroom

and tell me if it's for male or female. That avoids a little bit of embarrassment. If I'm looking at an elevator pad, I can tell which way the buttons are supposed to be going. If I need to go to my doctor's office, I can look at the directory and find out what sweet number it is. So having the AI on demand saves me a lot of time and not having to wait. It gives me precise and concise information to get through my day so that I'm not inconveniencing somebody else. And when you're visually impaired, it really feels like you're inconveniencing others to ask. Yeah. You know, that, thank you so much because this is kind of a thing that I don't necessarily always think about. But I, you know, it hurts my heart a little bit to hear that you feel

like you're inconveniencing other people, to be quite honest. But I appreciate that AI is at least giving you a greater sense of independence. You know, when my mom was sick, the thing that she told me all the time was that she just wanted to feel independent and to not have to ask me, even though, you know, for me, I was like, I would love to help you. I would love to do anything for you. So, you know, it does hurt my heart a little bit to hear that, but I am kind of sitting with the thought and absorbing the idea that, you know, maybe one really beautiful takeaway is helping people feel independent in this. I'm curious what hopes you have for this technology going forward. And, you know, we do have some meta people listening to this podcast. So, you know, if you could speak to them directly and, you know, some improvements that you'd like to see in this text, some pain points that you've had, like, would love to hear them.

Some of the pain points that I've experienced with the live AI is it's a battery drain. I get about four hours of average use before I have to recharge my battery if I'm not using the live AI. As soon as I kick that in. I can get about 20 minutes to a half hour on a full charge. And then I have to recharge my glasses. Then I have to go analog, and that's kind of an inconvenience. So having a more efficient battery would be nice. I also notice that unless I'm on a really fast data connection, that sometimes a live AI isn't as fast and responsive.

So I don't know if there's a way to kind of tweak that for the information that it's getting from the user. But definitely the battery would be helpful to have something. Along the live AI, something that I've noticed, and I've compared notes with some other friends, is I'll ask the live AI to please let me know when it notices something that I'm looking for. And in my case, let's say I go to Dollar Tree

and I'm looking for a specific item, and I know that I'm in the area. I asked him to find it and it says, okay, I'll locate that for you. We go past it and I'll say, did you find it? Oh, yes, I found it. And it's like, why didn't you tell me?

I asked a friend of mine who's also visually impaired. And in his case, he asked it to tell him, okay, let me know when I'm at my greenhouse. And he knows he's getting close. And he asks again and, oh, yeah, we're there. And it's like what you said you were going to tell me, okay, I'll remember that for next time. And it doesn't seem to remember that going forward. So I'm not sure if that's necessarily a pain point or growing pain of training an AI model.

You know, it's not necessarily a blind thing, but it would be incredibly helpful for that. Yeah, I would agree with you. I also would like something like that because I'm super ADHD. and I constantly forget the things that I'm looking for all the time and then start looking for other stuff. So I think that would help everybody, not just people who are visually impaired. You mentioned that you are part of a bunch of communities and that part of you finding out about this tech was hearing about it from word of mouth. I'm curious, have you seen the metas getting adopted by your community in ways that maybe were unexpected or, Or is the community kind of adapting to the fact that this tech is largely accessible, widely available?

Yeah, I think you mentioned something in an email about your guide dog and maybe thinking about ways the glasses can interact with guide dogs. In my community, these are spreading like wildfire. One Facebook community that I'm part of is blind buddies. and it's like every third post somebody is asking for the impression of getting the meta raybans and you read the posts of people coming down and how they use it for sorting their mail, sorting the medication, getting through their daily life. It's accessible. People are being gifted pairs. People are saving up to get a pair. These are becoming a must-have in the blind community.

when people are responding back, there is so much positive for the visually impaired. It's a wonderful example of how mainstream technology benefits everybody, rather than just being a niche group, which is very expensive to develop and work in. We have access to something that is just phenomenal at a very economical price. And something that also is beneficial to our families is the visual interpreter fatigue. When you're constantly asking somebody to describe something for you, that creates a lot of stress on family members, whether it's your spouse or your kids or whoever is helping you on your day to day. So that's a lot of value that gets put into the day-to-day within our community as well, increasing our contentment and happiness in the same. the family by not being so reliant. So tell me about how your AI glasses kind of integrate with

your guide dog school that you're in. I'm a student at the Seeing Eye in Morthetown, New Jersey, and I lost my guide dog link back in December, and I was paired with a new guide dog, Noel. This guide dog school is 100% donation-based, and they've been considering adding a small module to guide dog training in how guide dog handlers integrate their AI. And something that came up was introducing it at the right time. AI for every visually impaired person is not appropriate at every level. It's a great augmentation to get through your day, but it's also important to have the basic skills so that if this technology isn't available to you,

you still have your basic skills. And then from there, you can only do better when you have it. That's a really beautiful point. One instance, we had talked about in the email, how it benefited me getting to and from Guide Dog School, I use an app called Soundscape on my phone. I use that when I travel in unknown locations, and it gives me an audible description of what's around me

as far as a GPS. and having the wonderful audio coming above my ear, it's subtle, it doesn't take away from my awareness around me, so I can use that to get into the airport, I can interface with an escort to get me to the ticketing counter. When I landed in Newark, I didn't know who was picking me up, and it was easy just to tap on my glasses and answer the call coming in rather than put all of my luggage down and answer,

I could just accept the call and connect with the people. And when I got on campus, we have the legendary coffee machine. It's in Braille and it's also in text and I can't really read either. So using the glasses to find out which brand of caffeine I wanted for the morning made guide dog school a lot easier because we're 18 days of, up at 5 a.m. and going to bed at 10 p.m. and we're walking five, six miles a day. Kind of need that energy and need the right energy. Yeah. Yeah. You know, caffeine should be accessible to everybody who needs it regardless.

So what would you like for those of us who are cited or perhaps skeptical of AI to better understand about the experience that you've had? Like, what is something that everyone listening to this show should walk away and maybe file away in their brains to think about. I think with AI, people are looking for the negatives right now, and I think we need to be open-minded to the amazing things that it can offer us to improve the human condition. I mean, if you look at what blind life was like 100 years ago or 150 years ago before Braille really became a thing,

being visually impaired meant a life of isolation and loneliness. I mean, having access to this evolving technology allows us to be normal, to live a life like everybody else, having access to the same tech that everybody else has, without it being special or being something that sticks out like a source, thumb, these are amazing things for us. I mean, to have a visual interpreter that sits above my ears, that's kind of a game changer. I mean, to dismiss that as a bad thing, I'd really have to rethink that. I mean, there's so much wonderful that can be harnessed from AI for those of us that don't

have all of our senses. I mean, you take the hearing impaired community, having somebody or having an AI interpret visually what somebody is saying without sign language, that's also another opportunity for AI to advance. So there's a lot of things for the human condition to improve with AI rather than it being the doomsday device. Yeah, I, you know, I can also fall a little guilty into the AI Dumerism. I think it's good to hear about the positive use cases, because one thing that we're all having trouble with is parsing what the AI tech people or the, you know, Andy Jassy out here with Amazon saying like, oh, you know, we're going to reduce the workforce. I mean, that's not a great thing for the CEO of Amazon to come out and say. But I think sometimes it's hard to imagine how it fits into our daily life. So I really want to thank you for taking the time. Not only to like call me out to think in a different way, I deeply appreciated that. But also just to like challenge us all to think about how it can fit into daily life. And I am so deeply thankful that, you know, you were able to share your slice of, of this experience with us and so that we can maybe think more creatively.

Because it is very popular and sometimes very funny to make jokes about how AI is going to kill us all or steal a while a job. So, you know, I think this is an important conversation to have, too. It's also funny to joke around with the AI. We have two dogs in our home. One is a nine-pound black and white chihuahua. And I asked my AI to describe it and it described him as a cat. And I tried to describe to my AI that it was arguing with me that says it's obviously a cat you can tell by its ears. Oh, wow. So I'm going round and around with my AI. And it took me a minute. It's like you're an idiot. You're an idiot. You're arguing with a computer. You know, I've had those conversations as well, and, you know, maybe that's something that will improve over time. So, yeah, oh my gosh. Jason, thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate you.

So we've got to take another break, but when we come back, we're going to talk to Mike Buckley, CEO of Be My Eyes, which is an accessibility service that uses AI and live volunteers to help blind or low vision users. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Starting something new isn't just hard. It can be really scary, too. So much work goes into this thing that you're not entirely sure will even work.

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sell. Whatnot.com slash sell. We're back with Mike Buckley. He's the CEO of Be My Eyes. It's a service that uses AI and live volunteers, along with smart glasses and phones, to provide assistance to users who are blind or visually impaired. Thank you so much for joining us here on the Vergecast. And one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you was smart glasses are a huge rising

trend and tech, wearable tech especially, and I cover wearable tech. But one of the things we don't talk all that much about is how it could be an assistive technology as well. So I was wondering if you could give our listeners kind of a brief introduction into what B-My-Eyes is and how you found yourself with the company. Awesome. Thanks for having me. So B-My-Eyes was started by a Danish furniture craftsman who was losing his eyesight. And he was pissed off because there were times when his family and friends weren't around. to kind of help him with sight needs as his eyesight was deteriorating. So he invented this app whereby through one touch of a button,

someone who's blind or low vision can be seamlessly connected to a sighted volunteer on a one-way video, two-way audio call, right? So the sighted volunteer can see outside the back of your smartphone, and that volunteer can help with anything. Like, is this the tomato soup? Does this shirt match my pants? Am I at the right airport gate? And after the first week of the apps launched,

there were 10,000 people on it. And if you fast forward to today, there are about 900,000 blind and low vision users and astonishing 8.8 million volunteers, which I think is the largest online volunteer army in the world and the second largest volunteer army period after the Red Cross. And we operate in 150 countries,

in 180 languages. And what I like to say about this is hands, our founder, he successfully merged technology with human kindness, right, to solve a societal need. And if you fast forward from the inception in 2015 to about 2022, we started talking a lot about artificial intelligence under a belief that AI could have very serious benefit for people who are blind or have low vision in terms of visual interpretation. And so we were an alpha launch partner of Open AI way back in the spring of 2023, which seems like 10 years ago at this point, given all the AI developments. Oh, it really does. But now we do more than 3 million

AI sessions a month of visual interpretation where the blind or low vision consumer can literally take a picture of just about anything and get very fast interpretation. Fascinatingly, even though the AI sessions have gone through the roof, we've also seen that the call to human volunteers have also gone up. And so there is this thirst, I think, still for human connection, as well as a thirst for consumption under an AI model. And as long as the user kind of has a choice of either kind, we like that.

But that's what BMI's eyes is. And all of that is free for the blind or low-vision consumer. And we pay the bills by using this product and selling it to enterprises for great customer service for blind and low-vision consumers and for workplace accessibility. So people can use BMIIs at work, or people through our app can call a bunch of our customers through one touch of a button

and get seamlessly connected to customer service but with the benefits of AI or enhanced video. So that's how we pay the bills. That's pretty fascinating that users can choose between whether they want to interact with an AI in a particular circumstances or with humans. Have you gotten any feedback about what scenarios they might prefer one or the other?

You know, it varies. It's very individual-based, but there are a couple of common themes. Like, I talked to a woman who said she's using the AI in her house more often when she hasn't cleaned up, right? Because she doesn't want someone to see that her kitchen's messy. You know, I think that there's also a group of people

who are blind and low vision who just appreciate the human interaction. One of the unfortunate realities of people with sightlights, is that there are higher rates of loneliness and higher rates of depression and higher rates of mental health. And so having that human connection can be quite meaningful for people sometimes. I think there is also like sometimes people can be better than AI and other times AI can be better than people, right? Like if you call me up and ask me about, you know, something super technical, you know, a router's broken, I'm probably not going to be very effective, but the AI

will probably have an answer really quickly. And so I think that there's a lot of trial and error going on, and most consumers are using both. It's very nice to hear, actually, that the volunteers are still requested and wanted because the narrative with AI often is that it's one, scary, two, that it's going to take jobs away. And I mean, these are volunteers,

but it's still people who meaningfully are giving up their time to do something nice. So it's very kind of reassuring to hear that this isn't maybe a case where it's either or it's either and. Is that the right way I say? Like it's an and situation, not an or situation. As of right now, yes. I mean, who knows really what the future holds for us, right? As these systems become more sophisticated, and I think it's just about every day now where we hear about someone interacting with AI as though it was human and that's, you know, good or bad. I'm going to leave the value judgments

to somebody else at the moment. But we did. I remember telling our board of directors that we may put the kind of volunteer product out of business through the adoption of AI. Hasn't happened, but as of right now, it is an and rather than an or. Yeah, I mean, to be fair, if I wanted to ask someone if something matches, like if my shirt matches my pants, I think I would trust a human a little bit more than an AI. But, well, I guess we'll see how that evolves. But so one thing I've, I, I, just as long as you're not asking me about fashion,

You know what? Fair. But let's say, you know, this really kind of depends on a camera, right? So I'm just curious. You mentioned that obviously this works with a smartphone. That's a pretty mobile device that's easy for people to carry around. It's super ubiquitous. Are there any other types of gadgets that this works on? Look, of course, you know, smart glasses, right? It's a huge and growing market for us. And think about this from the perspective. of the blind or low vision consumer. If I have to interact with my world just to get basic visual information, that's very different than using glasses. What are the glasses? It's hands free, right?

That's power, right? That's power for the blind or low vision consumer. Imagine if you're going to an airport and you have a piece of luggage in one hand and a guide dog or a cane in the other hand as a blind or low vision. What the hell do you do with your phone? Right?

That's not a good experience. So using glasses or a wearable of any kind, but obviously the Rayban meta glasses have been a complete game changer for so many members of the blind and low vision community. Those glasses are power and freedom, independent speed, right, for a large section of humanity.

And by the way, the second you think about, you know, oh, you hear blind and low vision, it's not about you. It's about all of us, right? There are over 300 million people globally who are blind or have low vision, and the World Health Organization indicates that this number may double by 2050 because of maxwell degeneration, increased rates of diabetes, aging population, growing populations generally. And so the fact that you can have a wearable that frees up your

hands is a true game-changing step function, right? So we have a very strong belief that smart glasses and working with meta will not only help for sort of personal and human use cases, but also for employment use cases. And we're about to start a pilot with a Fortune 20 company on this front very soon. I cannot use their name yet, though. Okay. Well, you know, thank you for the hint. We'll keep an eye out for that. But, you know, I actually am someone with very poor eyesight, like, thanks parents and genetics. But like I have extreme astigmatism. And even I am at the point where I'm starting to use accessibility settings on my phone just so I can read things easier. So I don't remember a life without glasses.

To me, having smart glasses seems like a very natural evolution about it. So I guess one question I have was, was it always obvious to you that smart glasses was kind of the next kind of frontier for your product and your service? Because, you know, we tried smart glasses 10, 12 years ago with Google Glass. And that was a big no-no for a lot of people. So just curious with the Meta-Rabans, was that a really obvious partnership to you? Were you guys like, hey, we heard you're making this? Why haven't you contacted us? I can't say it was obvious because you and I lived through glass holes, right?

We remember that. Like, at a certain point, though, we kind of saw people in our community starting to use these things before we even had an integration. and there was some hope expressed. So no, it wasn't obvious, but it became apparent over time. And how the partnership came about was, you know, I contacted META and I was not really having success. And then, but then finally I got through to Andrew Bosworth, the META CTO, and he got it immediately. And he helped make it happen.

And so we contacted them, but to his credit, Andrew Baz said, yeah, we have to do this. and it's been a great partnership ever since. So how does the integration work? So we basically have built things on the back end, engineer to engineer at both companies where you can actually call a human volunteer through the mediglasses. And we're talking about more advanced integration now

of AI functionality, customer service, group calling, a whole bunch of other things. Again, under that belief that this is power for the community, number one, right, and independence. And second, that the consumer needs to be given a choice as to how they want to access visual information. That may be AI sometimes or it may be a human sometimes. So we're looking at enabling both.

That's pretty cool. So fun fact, it wasn't necessarily an obvious use case for me either. I was actually testing the live AI and the multimodal AI beta when it came out earlier this year. And I was kind of, I have to admit, I was a little flippant. I said something along the lines in my write-up about how, like, okay, who needs this caption obvious description? Because even though my eyes are bad, I can still see with corrective, very strong corrective lenses. And I actually heard a lot from our readers and people in the blind and low vision community, which is one reason why I'm reaching out now to be like, actually, this is life changing for us. This is game changing for us. Don't discount us here. So this is my penance talking to you guys. I'm just curious, like, how you view something like multimodal AI from the sense of, like, it creates its own challenges, right?

It's very power intensive. It's very draining on the battery. Have you guys put any thought as to how you're going to adapt your particular services to accommodate something that's so new and so power hungry and, you know, is possibly prone to hallucinating things. How do you approach that challenge as well? I look full speed ahead and you have to give the consumer the choice, right? Like there's no doubt that live interpretation of one's environment is powerful, important,

and necessary. That doesn't mean it's perfect, right? And whether it's a hallucination or whether it's my favorite test to do with live AI is if you hold your handout and then count your fingers down and ask it to tell you going on, it doesn't tell you it's counting. So there's still latency, right? There's a lag between what the camera is able to interpret and what the AI is able to interpret in terms of what's going on. But the future is really, really bright here, right? Real time will eventually become actually real time, which will have transformative power in terms of use cases. Like, think about

navigation, right? Think about getting around an airport. Think about obstacles, right? As you you walk along in the street, all of that is coming. I mean, meta is already demoed Orion glasses, which is a whole separate and wild capability. But combining that with kind of live AI, I think is, again, potentially transformative. I would also say that as a sighted person, I had the same initial reaction you did about, oh, what do I need kind of the live interpretation? And then I was wearing my meta glasses when I was walking around a city with a bunch of historical landmarks. And I just kept saying, hey, meta, what is this? And it told me what it was.

And I said, what's the historical significance? Tell me more about the year or the architect or the artist. And it was, it was like lovely, right? And it was lovely to have my phone in my pocket and not be searching around for information that way. And so I do think that we're literally at the cusp, the very early stages of exploring the utility of this technology. Yeah, for sure. And, And it seems like there's a lot of different takes on smart glasses. Obviously, I think for your service to work, it requires a camera. But I guess do you think that the smart glasses in general, provided they have a camera in there, that could be the kind of ideal form factor for your tech?

And are there other companies you're kind of thinking about working with that you can talk about? Look, yeah, it's certainly plausible that this will be the form factor of wearable that wins, right? Who knows? But, like, you know, what if I have a necklace that can do the same thing and I don't want to wear glasses all the time? Like, maybe that's going to win. Like, you know, there were all these rumors about would Apple or somebody else put a camera in the earbuds? I don't think that's happening anytime soon, but it's kind of interesting conceptually, right? but then I have to have something in my ears all day. Is that what I want to do? So I don't think we really know

the form factor that's going to win out at the end. I will say that in the current market, glasses are the best, right? And meta has the best product. Now, is Google going to come? Is Apple going to come? Are there like eight startups that are working on this too? Sure. And who knows what like Joni I and Sam are going to build over at Open AI, right? Although people are suggesting, They don't think it's glasses, but who knows? I do think that in the near term, the market for the people in the community that we represent, the blind and low vision, it's certainly the best form factor and has an incredible potential. And of course, we're willing to work with just about anybody and everybody, but I will always have a soft spot for META because META said yes to us. And they worked with us.

And by the way, they did that, you know, without asking for a lot of credit. and without like trumpeting it in a way that was kind of artificial or let's just say meta put in a lot of human hours in doing this while no one was looking. I feel like you are right that it was pretty a low key in terms of the overall overarching messaging because for better or worse we are always kind of catering to the mass market and this kind of feels a little bit like an oversight. But I do think, you know, this was kind of a use case that I saw mentioned for Android XR in the Google I.O keynote. Was that something that you rocked to? Have you seen like other companies talking about this to you guys? Have you seen like any increase in

outreach from people interested in this technology? Or is it just mostly been this one main partnership so far? No, I mean, it's a growing market. And we've been. contacted by everybody on some level, you know. And so, of course, we've talked with Google and we've talked with Apple for years about a whole host of things. And there are some integrations that we have on the Apple Vision Pro. And it's suffice it to say, like, we're getting more calls than ever, which is great. I think it's going to be interesting to see if what company or a group of companies solve some of the problems that you're talking about, right? Whether it's battery life, right? Whether it's, you know, small form factor, getting the cost down.

to a point like where it's really great. Like part of the remarkable thing about the metarabans is that the price point is not absurd, right, relative to a phone. And if you look at like other assistive technology, you know, even the Google glasses back in the day, they're often thousands of dollars. And here's the reality, 70% of people who are blind or have low vision are either unemployed or underemployed. So when you start talking about $2,000 or $2,500 for a device, it's over.

Right. It's not going to work. But if you have a $300 device or a $330 device that also doesn't charge you monthly for kind of AI costs, that's a big deal. Right. And I can foresee a future and a not too distant future where a government or a social service will subsidize the cost of that hardware because they know it provides substantive value to it, say, or to help facilitate employment and power and independence that we've talked about before. And so I think it's coming. Yeah.

I mean, that would be wonderful if that's the case. Like, even I know in a bunch of wearable tech, sometimes they are HSA or FSA eligible, and that really just helps with the accessibility and for people who might need it. But along that thought process, you know, I always say that accessible design is universal design because, like, it's a really important thing. I think we as tech reviewers could be a lot more thoughtful about that when we evaluate products. But from someone who is deeply in that space of kind of developing accessible tech, thinking about how accessible tech needs to go into the future as well,

I'm wondering, like, what would you like to see improved? We do happen to have a lot of people who are in the right rooms and the right spaces to make those improvements, listening to this podcast, I should think. So like what do you think would be like massive areas of improvement that could really make a huge benefit, like whether it be design, engineering, just like how we're thinking about developing like smart glasses or any other type of wearable device with the camera for this particular type of technology? I think it's the thing that you alluded to is that like it has to happen at the design stage. Like I'll give you a perfect example of this. years ago, whether it was malls or banks or airports, everybody rolled out some like touchscreen kiosk, right?

Whether it was an ATM or a hotel thing, do you know who that sucks for? Someone who's blind or low vision. It's completely useless to do that. And now we're going to solve a lot of these challenges in the near term through voice interaction, right, which has huge power and potential. But like the design stage is really important and making that very small, modest investment in the design stage to make sure your product

is accessible and adaptable to broader communities, not only pays dividends in capturing the market of disabled consumers, but it also makes your product better for everyone. And I'll give you an example of this. When we were an early partner with OpenAI on the first GPT models, we brought 19,000 blind and low vision,

testers to that effort, who gave constant feedback and iteration on the descriptions that they were getting from the models, which helped the open AI scientists and engineers further refined how those models work, making them better for everybody. So I think those investments pay off not only in trying to capture the market of the disabled consumers, but also making the product better holistically for a broader segment of society. Yeah, I think I was talking about. I was talking about, with my meta contact recently, and they mentioned that one of the options now that's possible, I still have to test it with the meta glasses is that you can now opt into much more descriptive descriptions from the AI. So like maybe me as a cited person, I don't need super detailed descriptions.

But if I am part of the blind or low vision community, I can opt for really detailed descriptions of that. And I think that, you know, that's like a really small tweak that I know. I know. I wouldn't have thought of if I didn't invite underserved communities into the room while talking about design. But to think about what you just said, that could be really useful for a sighted consumer as well. Like having a toggle switch that controls the depth of information that I get, like, how much? Like, if I'm out and about, I might want, like, a three-second answer to questions.

But if I'm on vacation or I'm touring a museum or whatever else, I might want the switch all the way on the other side because I want robust information. And so that's a really great example of how thinking about the design elements of the robustness of description and characterization can benefit not only the blind or low vision consumer, but anybody. I guess I'm curious if there's any parting thoughts from your experience or stories that have been shared with you from actual people using this technology that, you know, I think the vast majority of our listeners, myself included, are cited people. So, like, what are some things that we should be thinking about when we are thinking about how we evaluate this tech in our daily lives? You know, everybody comes at a consumer product or anything from their own lens. But, I mean, in terms of the people, you know, that you reach every day, like, I think it's good for everybody to think about, you know, the fact that the world and the people within it and their needs are pretty diverse, right? And so it's sometimes hard to think outside of our own little bubbles.

I know I'm guilty of it. But I can tell you that from the perspective of the community that we work with, the blind and low-vision consumer, I try to avoid hyperbole because there's plenty of that in the AI world going around right now without me adding to it. But I get two emails a day, anytime I run into someone at a conference, talking about the fact that the glasses and the experience. and the experience of BMIIs and AI combined with those meta glasses is literally life change. Don't take my word for that.

Talk to the blind or low-vision consumer, but I have stories about people taking the train for the first time on their own or getting around an airport. There was a story actually, there's a guy named Robbie, and he posted about it publicly so I don't feel like I'm outing him. He works for the BBC, and he read a book to his two-year-old. year old daughter for the first time using those glasses and be my eyes. Like, how cool is that? So think about the things that we all take for granted and then think about Robbie for the

first time as a dad, as a blind father, reading to his daughter. I just, I don't, it doesn't get any better than that. When you think about, like, kind of human impact, right? And the benefits of this technology. Like, there's a million reasons to be wary of AI. Right? And be fearful of it. But like, I'm pretty sure that there are a bunch of reasons also to embrace it and champion it. And that that story of Robbie reading to his daughter is probably my favorite. I, that's a really lovely story. And honestly, I test a lot of AI staff. And some of it can feel very dystopian. So thank you, honestly, for the reminder that, you know, there are creative uses that can help people genuinely lead better lives that maybe. to your point, are not steeped in the hyperbole of this is going to change everything,

but not give concrete examples of real life examples of how it could. So, man, that's, it's really lovely to hear that. So thank you so much for taking the time. Yeah, no, no, don't worries. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Okay, so we've got to take one more break, and then we're going to take a sexy, spicy, spicy question from the Vergecast Hotline.

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All right, we are back. Let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866, Verge 11, and the email is Vergecast at the verge.com. We love all your questions, and we try to answer at least one on the show every week. So let's get into this week's. And for this week, I have my lovely colleague, Mia Sato, on. And we are going to answer a little bit of a spicy question about smart glasses. Roll a clip. Hey, David. I've got a question about smart glasses. I haven't heard y'all talk about this yet in this way. I know that with, like, the wristband or, like, the necklace that, like, listens to you, there's ways to be like, oh, no, I'm going to mute it so they'll hear this private conversation. But, like, glasses see things, but also I need the glasses to see. So, I don't know, maybe this is too sensitive for the verge cap, but I have a wife. and sometimes she and I like doing things

and I like being able to speak her when I do those things but if she won't have sex with me if I've got the camera glasses on but if I take them off then I can't see her so like are we gonna live in a world where if you have smart glasses you have a pair of normal glasses or your wife won't have sex with you like, I don't know what that world looks like. And at that point, why have the glasses in the first place?

Anyway, I cannot be the only person had a thought about this, but also, like, when I go to the bathroom, is meta just going to have, like, a bunch of pictures of, like, me going to the bathroom? I don't like that. And if Eli Patel here, he's going to say, well, you do take four cameras into the bathroom with you every time, and I'd say, yeah, that's true. Like, an AI isn't training on it.

it, right? Like, I phone camera saw on all the time, right? Anyway, please help me. I want to get smart glasses, but I also like having sex. Walk and roll. Amazing.

Incredible question. Anyway, I asked you to be my partner answering this question because you write so many smart things about how technology shapes culture. And I feel like this is directly on that intersection and you know this is my beat and I've written some stuff about wearable etiquette

as well so yeah I feel like we are the most equipped people at the verge to answer this question with loving kind empathy yes so yeah yeah yeah so listener I don't know your name maybe that's better for the best but I guess I'm curious first of all what your wife thinks like is this a conversation that y'all have had about where in the house is appropriate to wear the glasses versus where isn't, that would be my first thing, is just, like, get a temperature check. Because I do think that there are some things that are intimate enough that, like, you might want a disconnected life there, right? Like you said, going to the bathroom, maybe when you have sex with your wife, other times.

because I think like the reality is that even when companies say like we have these great security protocols, your data is safe, there have been instances where moments that you wouldn't want a stranger to see are leaked, are revealed in some ways. And we can get into that and talk about those examples. But to me, one is like, ask your wife what she thinks, but also I feel like smart classes are not for the bedroom. I think that's point blank period. Super fair. So like last year when the smart glasses and the Vision Pro were getting kind of some buzz, I wrote a piece about like a wearable's primer etiquette. And I interviewed Emily Post's grandson about it.

And one of the things that he mentioned is exactly what you're touching on, which is like having these conversations. Like this is definitely a conversation you need to broach with the wife and like talk about what boundaries they're comfortable with. From like a gadget perspective, I can tell you there's an off button on the meta raybans specifically. So you can just turn it off. But like the interesting thing about these glasses and how they signal privacy when there's video recording or photo taking is that there's a little LED light. So you'll see the LED light when that's happening.

So that is a visual cue and a signal. But maybe, you know, I don't want to kink shame. People do. True. A number of acrobatics in the bedroom. I don't know where hands are being put. There could be ostensibly a situation if they're on that they could accidentally take a picture or start video. You know, there's...

Or like you forget to turn them off. Or you forget to turn them off before it's happening. There's meta-a-I in there. If you say anything that sounds... like, hey, Meda, I don't know what your wife's name is, but what if it's Greta? And you trigger the AI and the AI just starts doing something. Like, you know, one, you need to have the conversation. And two, I also agree that there are just certain spaces public versus private where maybe you, you want to like consciously draw a line between the technology and end your life. Like, I just think

that's healthy digital hygiene in general. And you know, you don't have to throw away your old glasses when you get the smart glasses. You can just keep them. Well, yeah, another part of this question that I wanted to pick up on was like the idea that you shouldn't have two pairs of glasses, which I completely disagree with. I think you actually actively should have multiple pairs of glasses because like, what if you break some? What if you just want to switch up your look? Like I am a recent glasses wearer. I'm not wearing glasses right now, but like I have like four pairs of glasses because sometimes one pair looks better with what I'm wearing or like some like fit on my head differently and I need something different, you know, depending on the day or depending on the activity.

So I would say like it's totally fine to have two pairs of glasses. I get that it might be annoying to switch back and forth, but like maybe you just leave a pair of normal glasses on your nightstand or, you know, in a drawer or whatever. I think it's fine to have two pairs of I am a lifelong glasses where I got my first, again, I'm also wearing contacts right now, but I got my first pair when I was four. And the first thing that I learned was you must always have a backup pair of glasses. Yeah. Because you don't know when it's going to break. And the thing about these meta glasses is that they, you do have to put them in a case to charge. So it's not like you can wear them 24-7 anyway, not that you would want to. So also, if it's just going to affect your performance, because you got them on, they're heavier than normal glasses. as well. So I, not as aerodynamic. They're not as aerodynamic. And again, no king shaming. I don't know what you're doing in there. I don't know what acrobatics are required or whatnot. So have a second pair of glasses always. Yeah. And I, you know, I would actually say that to anyone who's thinking about smart glasses, have a pair of dumb glasses on hand. Like, you don't,

yeah, you don't always want to have an AI coming with you everywhere for everything. Right. And I feel like this example and this question, is like, in my opinion, too intimate to even, like, risk it. There have been cases where, like, Roombas have recorded people in their homes without them realizing, like, on the toilet. Like, that's, like, a real thing that has happened. And then I don't think that in that case it was, like, publicly released, but people working for Roomba or working, you know, contractors or whatever did have access to those

images. Like, this is a thing that happens. And in my opinion, like, there are places that are just a little too. intimate for tech companies to have a seat at the table. Like, you know, for example, like, for me, I don't do any digital journaling. That is, like, pen and paper. 100%. I'm with you on that. I also don't do any digital journaling. Yeah, I'm not doing the Apple journal thing. I don't want them to know my thoughts. I want there to be one copy of it, and if I want to destroy it, I can burn it in the backyard. Yeah. Done. 100%. I'm, I used to do

digital journaling and those have all since been deleted. Yeah. And I pen and paper, like, it's just nice sometimes to do things analog. Not everything has to be this way, but, you know. Why take the risk? Why take the risk? And also, to your point, even if there's an off switch and even if you're really diligent about the off switch, you are human, you are going to forget.

I was testing the B, which was a wearable AI thing that listened to everything you did. I went to the bathroom. It heard everything, including me exclaiming, oh shit, that was a shit. And then the AI recommended that I get back on lactate because it was like, girl. I don't like that. That was the most humiliating thing of my life. And it was literally, I went, oh, shit, that was a shit.

Oh, shit, this thing is listening to me. Shit. A lot of shits in a row. And it recorded all of that. And, you know, Zach Company is. Like everything is private. We don't record the audio recordings. But there's a transcript. Yeah. There's like a, there's a trail of a thing that was said. Yeah. Also, like terms and conditions are subject to change at any time, right? Like, I feel like we have all learned that lesson many times over to the point where like, I'm not wearing the smart glasses to have sex. I think that's, yeah.

Bedrooms. No. Bathrooms. I'm sure there's another thing that starts with the beat. Even just like being around your house sometimes, like that is. is a private space. And I don't know. I feel like most people, like, you walk around in your underwear. You do forget your bathrobe in the bedroom. So you need to, like, do the naked dash through the house. Like there are lots of instances where it's not just relegated to like only in the bedroom, only in the bathroom, only in the closet. So yeah, I feel also like I will say I'm, there's probably like zero instances where I could be convinced to get smart glasses for all the reasons that we've talked about. Like I'm very forgetful. I kind of just like do what I need to do when I need to do it. So it's a no for me, but maybe you're, you have a happy balance. I'm more of a kind of a middle ground where obviously I'm testing these things. Obviously, I'm a gadget girlie, but I do think you have to be really thoughtful and intentional about when you're using this tech before this tech rules you. So I think have this conversation with your wife and she gets final say. Because the thing about this new technology is that we are navigating new privacy like comfort zones and levels with it. And, you know, with the new, the new. era of smart glasses privacy hasn't come up quite as much because I think we're a lot more comfortable, just everyone doing like, oh my God, this is my TikTok and public. Wow. So we're much more comfortable theoretically with cameras being around all the time. But this is a very private intimate space. This is a very private, intimate act. You got to have the conversation first. And it has to be something

that you both agree on and that you both consent to. Because she's not going to, I can tell you she's not going to. I can tell you she's not going to. be happy if you just buy them and wear them. Don't explain it. Don't explain it. Yeah, that's not good. There will be no sex having if that happens. So, yes, yeah, just think of it as an opportunity to kind of like expand your glasses look. Have more than, yeah, have a couple. Have a couple pair. The takeaway is have more than one pair of glasses. You can have more than one pair. Treat yourself. Treat yourself. Yeah. So I think. Hopefully this is helpful. And have your wife call in, too, if she has additional thoughts.

Yes, I would love to hear from her if she has her thoughts. Like, I would love to hear it. We could do a follow-up. Yeah. Okay, so that's it for the Vergecast today. Thanks, Mia. Thanks, anonymous listener. Thanks for everyone on the show today.

And thank you for listening. So there's a whole lot more from this conversation at theverge.com. We'll put links in the show notes, but also read theverge.com. Find our bylines. You guys are internet savvy. I know you know how to do it. As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, you can always email us at vergecast at theverge.com,

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This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, Travis Larchuk, and Andrew Marino. The Verge cast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Jake will be back on Friday to discuss all the news from this week and goodbye.