The smart glasses battle heats up – Apple and OpenAI tipped to be working on Meta-rivaling wearable

Fighting for the crown

News By Alex Blake published 5 November 2024

• New Apple report claims it's planning to enter the smart glasses space
• Former Meta AR glasses head is also now leading OpenAI's hardware team
• The two companies’ products are several years away from launching

If you’ve been following Apple rumors in recent years, you’ll know that the company reportedly doesn't just want to just develop mixed-reality headsets like the Vision Pro and call it a day – it wants to create full-blown smart glasses that are indistinguishable from a regular pair of specs.

Before now, that’s mostly remained mostly the realm of speculation and leaks. But now, it seems that Apple is taking some solid steps towards understanding what it needs to do to make a set of augmented reality (AR) glasses that can compete with rivals like the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses.

According to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman, Apple has started conducting internal surveys of other smart glasses available on the market. The focus groups (codenamed Atlas) are comprised of Apple employees rather than members of the public to keep things as secret as possible (although that hasn’t stopped Gurman’s report) and see various Apple workers log what they like and dislike about existing smart eyewear.

The goal is to help Apple understand what people want from a set of AR glasses and what sorts of features, materials and price points would work for its own device. Whatever the outcome, we may not see the results of these efforts for another few years, but it's the first sign that Apple is actively looking to break into the world of the best smart glasses.

OpenAI enters the fray

Rival companies like Meta have found success by offering relatively accessible smart glasses that may not be as technologically advanced as what Apple wants to achieve, but still offer users plenty of useful features for a comparatively affordable price.

And it looks like another one of Apple’s rivals is thinking of entering the smart eyewear market, as Caitlin Kalinowski, the former head of Meta’s AR glasses team, has just joined ChatGPT maker OpenAI to lead their robotics and consumer hardware division (via TechCrunch). It’s fueled speculation that OpenAI could be seeking to make its own pair of AR glasses.

Kalinowski previously oversaw Meta’s Orion AR prototype, as well as leading the hardware team behind Meta’s virtual reality eyewear for nine years. Posting on LinkedIn, Kalinowski wrote: “In my new role, I will initially focus on OpenAI’s robotics work and partnerships to help bring AI into the physical world and unlock its benefits for humanity.”

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