Why Meta is betting its future on computers you wear on your face

It wasn’t your typical concert experience.

I watched Billie Eilish from a perspective that felt like I wasn’t in the audience or behind the scenes, but somewhere in between: hovering near the stage alongside the singer as she grasped a fan’s hand in the front row.

This is what it’s like to watch a clip from Eilish’s 3D tour special shot in Arizona and Manchester, England, with Meta’s new VR Glasses. CNN tried the glasses at Meta’s offices in New York last week ahead of their launch in the spring. Meta is banking on experiences like Eilish’s show to make its new eyewear a hit.

Those glasses, along with camera-free Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses launching Tuesday, are part of the social media giant’s decade-long ambition to develop what it believes will be the next version of the personal computer.

Meta’s previous efforts in this space and its big bet on the metaverse have largely flopped, but the company is convinced things will be different this time. It’s betting that integration with AI agents, stylish designs and more advanced display technology will convince consumers the glasses are the future, despite widespread privacy concerns that have prompted bans and global pushback .

Meta is pitching next year’s new VR glasses as a computer, game console and movie theater in one. The glasses, which are priced at about $1,300, aren’t anything like the Quest VR headsets Meta has been selling for years, which weigh about 18 ounces and look like a visor or helmet rather than glasses.

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Instead, the new version resembles a giant pair of sunglasses and weigh about 3.5 ounces. That’s because the computing components are stored in a separate module attached to the glasses with a wire.

Users interact with apps by using their eyesight as a mouse and tapping their thumb to their index finger to click. These gestures were easy to learn, although scrolling took a little practice. That involved making a fist and moving my thumb along my index finger as if it were a trackpad.

The VR glasses seem to function as a substitute for personal computers and televisions. A user can watch a movie or work across multiple displays like they normally would with their laptop or flat screen.

The goal, said Ryan Cairns, Meta’s vice president of VR, is not to replace existing computers but to expand how and where consumers can use them.

“I can put VR glasses on in the plane and basically have like three monitors’ worth of work in front of me,” he said.

Meta’s Ray-Ban AI glasses, on the other hand, are meant to be worn all day like normal glasses but can handle some of a smartphone’s tasks like getting directions, listening to music and answering questions.

Its newest Ray-Ban glasses don’t have a camera, excluding a controversial feature that raised widespread privacy concerns. The glasses have speakers and microphones, but Meta says the mic is limited to phone calls and talking to its AI assistant. It’s like having AirPods built into your glasses.

The idea isn’t new. Amazon has been selling Alexa-enabled smart glasses with microphones and speakers since 2019, and a wave of startups have also launched audio glasses without cameras. Meta decided two years ago that it wanted to launch audio-only AI glasses in 2026 because people frequently use their glasses for talking on the phone or listening to podcasts, said Alex Himel, Meta’s vice president of wearables.

Meta also still sells other glasses with cameras and launched an upgraded version of those spectacles last month called the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3. The new glasses have a lighter design, a shortcut button and longer battery life, according to the company.

Meta missed out on the mobile boom, ceding control of the tech devices that serve as the portal to its services to companies like Apple, Google and Samsung, thus interfering with Meta’s core advertising business. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in 2022 that an iPhone optional setting that blocks apps from tracking users across the internet would cost the social media behemoth $10 billion in earnings that year.

Meta has spent more than a decade trying to reduce its dependence on hardware makers by releasing everything from a Facebook-branded phone to a smart home hub and VR headsets.

“There was always a very strong desire: ‘How do we have people on our own platform so we have a little bit more control?’” said Ash Saulsbury, CEO of AI company Awear, who worked in Meta’s wearables division from 2017 to 2019.

Smart glasses are gaining popularity, with shipments expected to grow 263% in the first half of 2026 and more than 7 million AI glasses sold by Ray-Ban parent EssilorLuxottica last year. But those glasses have sparked privacy concerns, and Meta’s previous hardware efforts failed to excite consumers. The company’s Reality Labs division, which includes its smart glasses and VR headsets, continues to lose money while VR headset sales have been declining industry-wide.

“The glasses are still a little bit of a solution chasing a problem,” said Daniel Newman, CEO of technology market research and advisory firm Futurum.

Christoph Schmidt/picture-alliance/dpa/AP

For Meta, there’s more at stake than just a market share of the tech products needed to operate apps.

Meta’s new hardware could give consumers more direct access to its Muse AI agent, which is key in determining how it compares with rivals like OpenAI and Google in the AI race. With glasses like the Meta Ray-Bans, users simply speak to the assistant and show it what’s in their surroundings rather than opening an app and typing a question or taking a photo.

For the VR glasses, Muse will be able to work across multiple projects and tasks managed across various virtual windows and apps, said Cairns. The glasses will ship with Muse, including support for the new Muse Wonder model announced on Monday and any other updates between now and then, he added.

Still, Meta is taking a chance that consumers are willing to add another device to their lives, especially as AI agents become more prominent in gadgets people already own. The optimistic view hinges on how much AI mirrors the smartphone boom, according to Jitesh Ubrani, who covers consumer tech for market research firm The International Data Corporation.

He compared Meta’s AI and glasses gamble to the rise of Uber or Lyft, as hailing a car ride through an app only became common with the growth of smartphones.

“Consumers essentially are just seeing AI today as a simple chatbot,” he said. “They don’t realize how powerful and capable it can be. And both AI and these glasses kind of go hand in hand right now.”

这并非一次典型的演唱会体验。

我观看 Billie Eilish 的表演，感觉自己既不在观众席，也不在幕后，而是在两者之间的某个位置：我徘徊在舞台附近，与这位歌手并肩而立，看着她握住前排一位粉丝的手。

这就是用Meta公司新推出的VR眼镜观看比莉·艾利什在亚利桑那州和英国曼彻斯特拍摄的3D巡回演唱会特辑片段的体验。CNN上周在Meta公司位于纽约的办公室试用了这款眼镜，该产品将于春季正式上市。Meta公司寄希望于像艾利什的演出这样的体验，让这款新眼镜大获成功。

这些眼镜，以及周二推出的无摄像头雷朋 Meta Audio 眼镜，都是这家社交媒体巨头十年来雄心勃勃的计划的一部分，该计划旨在开发其认为的下一代个人电脑。

Meta此前在该领域的尝试以及对元宇宙的大力投入大多以失败告终，但该公司坚信这次情况会有所不同。他们押注于通过与人工智能代理的整合、时尚的设计和更先进的显示技术，让消费者相信这款眼镜代表着未来，尽管普遍存在的隐私担忧已经引发了禁令和全球范围内的抵制。

Meta公司将明年即将推出的新款VR眼镜定位为集电脑、游戏机和影院于一体的设备。这款眼镜售价约为1300美元，与Meta公司多年来销售的Quest VR头显截然不同。Quest VR头显重约18盎司，外观更像头盔或面罩，而非眼镜。

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新版本的外观不像传统眼镜，而像一副巨大的太阳镜，重量约为3.5盎司。这是因为计算组件被放置在一个单独的模块中，并通过电线连接到眼镜上。

用户通过用眼睛当作鼠标来操作应用程序，并用拇指轻敲食指来完成点击操作。这些手势很容易学习，但滚动页面需要一些练习。练习时，需要握紧拳头，然后像使用触控板一样，用拇指沿着食指滑动。

VR眼镜似乎可以替代个人电脑和电视。用户可以像使用笔记本电脑或液晶显示器一样，​​在多个屏幕上观看电影或工作。

Meta公司负责虚拟现实技术的副总裁瑞安·凯恩斯表示，他们的目标不是取代现有的计算机，而是扩展消费者使用计算机的方式和地点。

他说：“我可以在飞机上戴上VR眼镜，基本上就能在我面前看到相当于三个显示器的工作内容。”

另一方面，Meta 的 Ray-Ban AI 眼镜旨在像普通眼镜一样全天佩戴，但可以处理智能手机的一些任务，例如获取路线、听音乐和回答问题。

Meta公司最新推出的Ray-Ban眼镜没有配备摄像头，这避免了此前引发广泛隐私担忧的争议。这款眼镜内置扬声器和麦克风，但Meta表示，麦克风仅用于通话和与AI助手对话。这就像把AirPods耳机内置到了眼镜里。

这个想法并不新鲜。亚马逊自 2019 年起就开始销售配备麦克风和扬声器的 Alexa 智能眼镜，同时，许多初创公司也推出了不带摄像头的音频眼镜。Meta 可穿戴设备副总裁 Alex Himel 表示，两年前，Meta 就决定在 2026 年推出纯音频 AI 眼镜，因为人们经常使用眼镜打电话或听播客。

Meta公司目前仍在销售其他带摄像头的眼镜，并于上个月推出了升级版眼镜，名为Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3。据该公司称，新款眼镜设计更轻便，配有快捷按钮，电池续航时间更长。

Meta错失了移动互联网的繁荣时期，将作为其服务入口的科技设备的控制权拱手让给了苹果、谷歌和三星等公司，从而干扰了Meta的核心广告业务。Meta首席执行官马克·扎克伯格在2022年表示，如果iPhone推出一项阻止应用程序追踪用户互联网活动的选项，这家社交媒体巨头当年将损失100亿美元的收入。

十多年来，Meta 一直致力于减少对硬件制造商的依赖，推出了从 Facebook 品牌手机到智能家居中心和 VR 头显等各种产品。

“我们一直非常渴望：‘我们如何才能让人们使用我们自己的平台，从而拥有更多的控制权？’”人工智能公司 Awear 的首席执行官 Ash Saulsbury 说，他曾在 2017 年至 2019 年期间在 Meta 的可穿戴设备部门工作。

智能眼镜正日益普及，预计2026年上半年出货量将增长263%，雷朋母公司依视路陆逊梯卡去年售出了超过700万副人工智能眼镜。但这些眼镜引发了人们对隐私的担忧，而Meta公司此前的硬件产品也未能引起消费者的兴趣。该公司旗下的Reality Labs部门（包括其智能眼镜和VR头显产品）持续亏损，而VR头显的销量在整个行业都在下滑。

“这款眼镜仍然有点像是在用解决方案来解决问题，”科技市场研究和咨询公司Futurum的首席执行官丹尼尔·纽曼表示。

克里斯托夫·施密特/picture-alliance/dpa/美联社

对于 Meta 而言，这不仅仅关乎运营应用程序所需的技术产品的市场份额。

Meta 的新款硬件有望让消费者更直接地访问其 Muse 人工智能助手，这对于判断其在人工智能领域与 OpenAI 和 Google 等竞争对手的差距至关重要。借助 Meta Ray-Bans 等眼镜，用户只需对着助手说话，并向它展示周围环境，而无需打开应用程序、输入问题或拍照。

凯恩斯表示，Muse VR眼镜将支持在多个虚拟窗口和应用程序中管理多个项目和任务。他还补充说，眼镜将随附Muse软件，包括对周一发布的新款Muse Wonder型号的支持，以及此后的所有其他更新。

尽管如此，Meta 仍然押注消费者愿意在生活中增加一台设备，尤其是在人工智能助手在人们已有的电子设备中越来越普及的情况下。市场研究公司国际数据公司 (IDC) 负责消费科技领域的 Jitesh Ubrani 表示，这种乐观态度取决于人工智能在多大程度上能够复制智能手机的蓬勃发展。

他将 Meta 的人工智能和眼镜冒险比作 Uber 或 Lyft 的崛起，因为通过应用程序叫车只有在智能手机普及后才变得普遍。

他说：“消费者现在基本上只把人工智能看作一个简单的聊天机器人。他们没有意识到它有多么强大和实用。而人工智能和这些眼镜现在可以说是相辅相成的。”