Fox on Tech with Eben Brown - Google plans to try out A.I. smart glasses in 2026

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
John Mounts filling in for JT. And if you're looking
for some cool gadgets to give somebody for Christmas, we
have some idea of how Google might be able to
play a part in some gadgets you could get. In
twenty twenty six, were joined by Evan Brown Eban live
from Miami. Welcome to the show. Good morning, Good morning.
So it looks like Google is going to try and

(00:20):
jump in with this whole smart aiglass because we've heard
about the Google Glass, but I guess it's not smart yet.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well, Google Glass was smart. It was something that was
debuted in twenty thirteen and it didn't stay on the
market long because it wasn't very practical. Could It was
a smart glasses set that could interact with your phone
and whatnot and project things onto the lenses for the
wearer to see. But they were these wire rimmed glasses

(00:49):
that had a big honkin thing on the right side
that housed a camera and other parts, and it wasn't
very comfortable and it just didn't really catch on. Since then,
we've seen other face wearing tech Meta's glasses have become
somewhat popular. They're still kind of big and clunky. But
not as big as the Google Glass was. Apple has

(01:12):
its Vision pro goggles, And speaking of clunky, these are
things that are really really big and require an external
battery pack that connects via a cord that you would
put the battery pack I guess maybe in your pocket
or on your belt or something like that. And of
course they're very expensive. They're thirty five hundred dollars or
something like that, and so not again, not very practical
for everyone. It does provide an amazing ar augmented out

(01:36):
reality experience, but because so a few people are using it,
not too many developers are really developing apps for it,
and so I suspect that will change over time, but
as of now, it's kind of a slow adoption. Google
wants to get into this game, really, so they are
developing a pair of glasses that they plan to make
available next year that will probably be something similar to

(01:58):
the Meta Glasses in terms of, you know, kind of
being big and bulky but still wearable for most people.
It may still need a battery pack, but it will
have integration with it'll be first of all, it'll be
running on Android, and second of all, it'll have integration
with Google's Gemini AI, and what that means is that
you would have the ability to talk to the AI
and it would be able to project its information to

(02:20):
you on the lenses and give you some kind of
immersive or augmented reality experience with that information. So if
you're let's say, looking at a restaurant right physically looking
at it, and you say, you know, Gemini, tell me
about this place any good? It might pop up a
summary of recent reviews, for instance. It might have the

(02:42):
ability to interact with some of those apps that provide
wait times and reservation abilities at restaurants, where it would
tell you, hey, it's great, but there's an hour wait
for a table, and you may say you all right,
I'll wait there, No no thanks, or you know, put
in a reservation for me and I'll come back. These
are the time of things we're getting into with AI.
It's called a gentic AI, meaning agent that it does

(03:04):
things for you, and to have it through these glasses
just provides you with another way to interact and utilize
that tool. The question, of course, is how much will
it cost and will it lead to a wider spree
wider spread adoption of this kind of tech. Part of
the barrier always is going to be cost For instance,

(03:25):
the Apple Vision pro. Not many people are going to
drop thirty five hundred dollars on that. But then again,
when the first iPhone came out, everyone said, hey, this
is really neat, but this is the toy for millionaires.
And now everyone has a smartphone, right, I mean, it's
it's pretty ubiquitous, Evan.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
One of the things I could see us for I
was at a gathering, I guess it was yesterday or
the day before, and there's a bunch of people in
the room. Some of them I knew a lot of them.
I didn't. A lot of them I should know and didn't,
and I was thinking, well, we really I was actually
remarking to somebody, you know, it'd be really cool, is
if we had some sort of agentic AI on into
reality kind of glasses that when you look at somebody

(04:02):
and they don't realize it's happening, but when you're looking
at them, a little things pops up over their face.
It says who they are. You know. It goes out
there to the internet. It searches like say, your social
media contacts, and it puts the name of you know,
Bill Jackson from you know, from Bill's used cars up
there over his head, so you know, hey, Bill, how's
it going? And really you have no idea who Bill was,
but the AI did.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
Well, that's you know, you're the second person this morning
to ask me about that exact same thing, and maybe
you would find that helpful. There are questions of privacy. However,
these things have cameras on them, and you know, if
someone's walking around recording things, you can kind of on
their phone you can kind of tell, right, But if
there's a pinhole camera on the side of the glasses frames,

(04:43):
how do you know that you're not being recorded by
the person who's just approached you. That that's an interesting
concept to have to deal with now. I also agree
that your idea could be helpful. There are people that
may have cognitive issues, memory issues. They may not be
able to recognize people's faces. That could turn into a
safe the issue if they don't recognize you know, let's
let's say, for instance, someone who may have dementia right uh,

(05:06):
and they can't recognize spaces anymore, especially if their loved ones.
Imagine wearing a pair of glasses that would pop up
that information that says, yes, this is your son, this
is your your wife or whatever the case is. Uh.
And they could rely on that to to you know,
be assured that that's someone that they could trust. Right
And in that aspect, it would be incredibly helpful. Let's

(05:26):
say you're hearing impaired. UH. The technology could listen to
the person who you're interacting with and provide like post
captioning on the on the lens for you to be
able to see. That could be incredibly freeing to so
many people. But there are privacy issues involved in that.
You know, people are being recorded either visually or audioly

(05:48):
audio wise, uh, And and so we we have to
we have to balance that between the two right there there,
and and eventually it'll probably come down to the law
having to do that.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
Evin, I'm assuming that everyone is always recording me all
the time. You never know, Evan Brown.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
You're sitting in front of a microphone, so we haven't
known you. By the way, every microphone is always hot,
you know.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Every mic is an open mic. I say it to
my people all the time. Evan Brown Live from Miami.
And by the way, check out Evan Brown. He does
a segment that we run all the time, the Fox
on Tech segments Evan, thank you so much for joining
us in morning on Alabama's Morning News