At its annual I/O keynote yesterday, Google confirmed it's poised to inject AI into virtually everything, from Gmail to Android. Not to be forgotten is Google Glass, the tech giant's stab at a covert augmented reality (AR) wearable from over 10 years ago. While Glass failed miserably, AI could be the key to making the device work—a possibility that isn't lost on Google executives.
One of I/O 2024's biggest announcements was Project Astra, Google's attempt at artificial general intelligence (AGI). Seemingly a direct competitor to OpenAI's multimodal GPT-4o, Project Astra reportedly combines Gemini with natural language responses and real-time image recognition. A demo video shows the tool naming the parts of a speaker, crafting poetic alliterations, explaining a chunk of code, and using the view from an office window to determine which London neighborhood the user is in. The video also shows a Google employee donning a pair of eyeglasses, which appear to pick up the Project Astra experience.
Sure enough, Google co-founder Sergey Brin said at I/O that Project Astra would make a perfect wearable. "Hands-free is the idea," he said. "A lot of things you want commentary on: you're cooking or doing some sport, or you want this thing to help you. It's awkward to do it with your hands also holding your phone."
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said Project Astra "works amazingly on phones" but would likely find a better home in other devices. "There probably needs to be other form factors as well, when these systems are fully developed," he said. "It seems to me like Glass is an obvious one."
Brin said Project Astra was a "killer app" for an AI wearable, adding that Glass was "like, the perfect hardware" for AGI.
It's unclear whether Google intends to bring back Glass or merely thought its Project Astra announcement was a convenient time to reminisce on the failed product. But if the company were to revive Glass, it could compete with Meta, whose Ray-Ban Meta eyeglasses and sunglasses use AI to share facts about a user's surroundings. While Ray-Ban Meta's landmark education feature was allegedly "shaky at best" upon its March 2024 release, Project Astra appears to be in a similar spot: After testing out Project Astra for themselves on Tuesday, two Engadget writers reported that it'd "be a while" before Google's AGI became truly useful. Maybe the two applications are perfect rivals.