French president Emmanuel Macron wears Snapchat's spectacle Augmented Reality glasses during the inauguration of the group's headquarters in France on May 19, 2025 in Paris. — AFP
Snap Inc plans to launch its first consumer pair of augmented-reality glasses next year, beating a planned release from rival Meta Platforms Inc by several months.
The new eyewear, called Specs, will be a smaller and lighter version of a device called Spectacles it made available to software developers last year, the company said Tuesday. Those glasses, which are available to developers for US$99 (RM419) per month, run the company’s Snap OS operating system and are controlled using hand gestures, two features that will come to the consumer version.
Snap has been working on smart glasses for years, though earlier iterations focused on image and video capture rather than augmented reality. Given Meta’s growing success with its Ray-Bans glasses line and its planned move to launch AR glasses in 2027 code-named Artemis, Snap’s decision to move forward with consumer-focused hardware has taken on fresh urgency.
The Specs won’t use an external battery and the updated design will focus on comfort and usability. The glasses will be available in black to start, with special editions to possibly follow later, chief executive officer Evan Spiegel said in an interview. He did not disclose the price or hardware specifications, except to say that the glasses will cost less than Apple’s US$3,499 (RM14,835) Vision Pro headset.
The glasses also incorporate an artificial intelligence assistant, a way to play games with friends, and a "workstation” area where users can do things like browse the web and stream video. "We’re really focused on and investing in glasses with things that the phone just isn’t capable of,” Spiegel said.
In the interview, Spiegel teased a handful of upcoming hardware features and software capabilities, such as using AI to help change a tire, set the dining room table or nail a tricky billiards shot. New versions of Snapchat Lenses, the company’s augmented-reality experiences, run the gamut from having an archery match with friends to playing a 3D version of the classic Snake game.
People use AR Lenses in the Snapchat camera over 8 billion times each day, and over 400,000 developers have built more than 4 million Lenses using Snap’s tools, Spiegel said.
Specs will also integrate with various AI models, including those from OpenAI and Alphabet Inc’s Google, allowing developers to build AI-powered Lenses that can respond to various inputs in real time. The device will also support uses such as AI text translation, currency conversion and recipe suggestions based on what’s in your refrigerator - capabilities that have already been built for the latest developer version of the company’s smart glasses.
As the wider tech industry grapples with concerns over AI and privacy, Spiegel said his company is taking the issue seriously.
"Regardless of the demographic or age, privacy is incredibly important to us as a company and incredibly important for the future of these sorts of devices,” he said, adding that the device will strike a balance between providing the right features while protecting users’ data. – Bloomberg
