“It took humans millions of years to evolve and develop two hands. It’s a waste to hold a smartphone with one hand,” Superhexa founder and CEO Xia Yongfeng recently joked to local news channel tmtpost.com.

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Live caption glasses allow deaf people to read conversations using augmented reality

Live caption glasses allow deaf people to read conversations using augmented reality

With the rapid development of generative artificial intelligence in recent years, smart glasses have become enormously more intelligent and interest in these wearables has increased as users can instantly ask LLMs about their surroundings or have conversations translated in real time.

Ray-Ban and Meta Platforms have been the biggest beneficiaries of this trend since they added AI features to their $300 camera-equipped smart glasses last year. The new versions have sold better in a few months than previous versions did in two years, Francesco Milleri, CEO of Italian-French eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica, which owns Ray-Ban, told Reuters in July.

Sinolink Securities expects shipments to reach 2 million units by the end of the year. By comparison, a total of 480,000 augmented reality glasses were shipped last year, according to the securities firm.

Chinese competitors are now trying to offer similar features to Ray-Ban’s frames, but at a much lower price.

For the Jiehuan glasses, according to the company, this means 11 hours of music playback and up to half a month of standby time in a frame weighing just 30 grams. Other features include voice-guided navigation, AI chat and audio translation.

A customer who tried the glasses and shared his experience on the social media platform Xiaohongshu said Superhexa offers stylish frames that have good audio quality but struggle with voice recognition in noisy environments.

Ivan Lam, senior analyst at market consultancy Counterpoint, said current AI glasses are like regular glasses or sunglasses equipped with speakers, cameras and AI.

The novelty may attract early adopters, but people who don’t need glasses may not appreciate wearing them all the time, especially when the electronic components inside the smart glasses can add weight, Lam said. Manufacturers will need to “continue to reduce weight, improve the wearing experience and battery life” to continue to grow, he said.

Even Realities, a year-old startup based in Shenzhen, is also putting style first with its new G1 glasses, which began shipping internationally on Thursday. These glasses, which have LED microdisplays on the lenses but no speakers, start at $600.

“The big opportunity we see is to make the glasses open source,” Tavangar said, “and enable developers working on AI to create all kinds of creative (apps).”

According to Tavangar, developers have already created an app for Frame that helps autistic people decipher the emotions of others and another for doctors and nurses that uses AI to provide a second opinion on a diagnosis.

However, these companies’ prices are much higher than Superhexa’s, but they primarily target markets outside China, where access to international AI models is also strictly controlled.