Two new smart glasses released in late October suggest that the next frontier in wearable technology isn’t simply answering calls or taking photos. It’s turning everyday life into something between a video game and a desktop computer.
On October 27, Brilliant Labs launched its Halo glasses, which combine artificial intelligence with an unusual question of what if your actual life became a video game?
Which is pretty much the plot of the movie Free Guy, just in case you missed it.
The company’s Narrative gaming experience uses real-world surroundings to create an evolving adventure. Walking around your neighborhood, exploring a new city, or encountering people can become part of the gameplay. Think Pokémon Go, except the game wants more of your attention—and potentially your entire daily routine.
Halo also includes an AI assistant called Noa, which can help wearers recall conversations and information they’ve encountered. Brilliant Labs emphasizes its open-source approach and privacy protections, including processing sensitive audio and visual information locally rather than routinely sending the raw recordings to the cloud.
That’s an important distinction when you’re wearing something equipped with cameras and microphones on your face, but not everyone at brunch signed up to become part of your digital footprint.
Related: Meta’s $249 Smart Glasses Are Here. Just Don’t Forget Your Charger.
Your Next Computer Might Be on Your Face
A day later, Xreal and Google introduced a considerably more expensive vision of the future.
The Xreal Aura, uses Google’s Android XR platform to project digital content into the wearer’s field of view. Instead of carrying all its computing power in the frames, the glasses connect by cable to a separate processing device.
The result resembles a portable workstation. Wearers can arrange multiple virtual screens around themselves, watch movies on a simulated big screen, play games, and use Google’s Gemini assistant to interact with digital and physical surroundings.
For travelers, that could mean turning an airplane seat into a private movie theater or a hotel desk into a multi-monitor office. It could also mean becoming the person wearing a computer on their face while waiting to board Group 6.
Neither approach is inherently ridiculous. A wearable assistant that respects privacy could be useful. So could a portable screen that doesn’t require hauling a monitor around and trying to write this article in while cramped in Delta economy.
But Halo and Aura illustrate a question the industry hasn’t quite answered. Do we think consumers want glasses that help them experience the world, or glasses that give them more reasons to look away from it?
