Of course, not everyone can fly in the wind, and for the deep-rooted smart glasses track, manufacturers need a profound foundation in AI + hardware.

Author/Tomato Sauce

Produced by/Newpick Business Review

In the first year of large model deployment, the most imaginative smart wearable device is undoubtedly the AI glasses that grow a brain after being equipped with a large model - greatly enhancing the capabilities of previously somewhat useless smart glasses, allowing them to hold their heads high in the market and stage a "return of Princess Xi".

Taking the AI glasses collaboration between Meta and Ray-Ban as an example, by mid-May, sales exceeded 1 million, indicating that public acceptance has reached the "market waterline". Regarding the market prospects for AI glasses, the industry is also optimistic. CITIC Securities analysis states that while low-cost AI smart glasses provide a solid foundation, through the integration of software and hardware (near-eye display + all-day headphones + camera + AI), instant and continuous AI response significantly enhances user efficiency, which is the core reason why consumers will pay for AI smart glasses in the future.

Facing huge growth potential, giants who are "crossing the river by feeling the stones of Meta" are also accelerating their layout. In July this year, Google released AI glasses equipped with the new Gemini model at the 2024 Developer Conference, claiming that they can instantly recognize scenes and objects in daily life and provide intelligent suggestions through AI; not long ago, insiders revealed that Apple will launch an initiative codenamed Atlas, involving collecting feedback from Apple employees on smart glasses, with related research led by Apple's Product System Quality (APSQ) team.

Domestically, giants with leading AI + hardware capabilities are also placing bets in this track. At Baidu's 2024 World Conference on November 12, Xiaodu Technology CEO Li Ying unveiled Xiaodu's new AI hardware product - Xiaodu AI Glasses, which is reportedly the world's first native AI glasses equipped with a large Chinese language model and will be officially launched in the first half of next year.

Why are giants placing bets on AI glasses, which are widely favored by the market? What "internal strength" is required to make good AI glasses?

1. Large Model "Enters the Frame": The Biggest Growth Driver for the Smart Glasses Market

Why have smart glasses previously failed to integrate into the mass market, leading to an awkward situation of "neither here nor there"? Industry insiders told Newpick Business Review that the current form, weight, usage comfort, and intelligence of smart products are still not ideal, and application scenarios are limited, with many people only purchasing them out of novelty.

AR glasses, with their lightweight design and good scalability, can be said to be "a step above," but they still lack the motivation for mass adoption - although AR excels in audio-visual and entertainment experiences, it still needs effort in expanding other application scenarios.

AI glasses, on the other hand, can be described as the ultimate pragmatists, designed from the outset for market adoption and user needs: Starting from user demands, firstly, as a first-person perspective device for humans, AI glasses can perfectly capture information such as vision, sound, and location. Camera clarity is crucial as it determines the visual imaging and recognition effect of the glasses. Xiaodu AI Glasses are equipped with a 16-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera, along with self-developed AI anti-shake algorithms, making them capable of handling both static and dynamic scenarios.

Weighing just 45 grams, they are lightweight and thinner than other smart glasses. As stated, with a weight not much different from ordinary glasses, the user migration cost is low, and there will be no obvious "foreign body sensation" in daily use. A 56-hour standby time avoids the embarrassment of "smart glasses in the morning, ordinary glasses in the afternoon," and with the support of a large model, they better understand user needs, significantly enhancing the user experience and making it easier to popularize in the mass market.

At the same time, from an application perspective, with the support of a large model, AI glasses better understand user needs, significantly enhancing the user experience and making it easier to popularize in the mass market. As pointed out by Wang Peng, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in addition to current fields such as entertainment, education, and healthcare, AI glasses can also find new application scenarios in tourism, socializing, retail, and other industries.

Indeed, looking at the various tracks of smart glasses, AI glasses can be described as the ultimate pragmatists, designed from the outset for market adoption and user needs.

Internationally, Emteq Labs' Sense smart glasses further tap into the medical potential of AI glasses by monitoring users' facial expressions, eating habits, and physical activities to generate effective medical and health data, further expanding the imagination space for AI glasses.

Domestically, taking Xiaodu AI Glasses, equipped with the ERNIE Bot large model and combining visual and positioning technologies, as an example, they cover various scenarios of users' lives, work, and travel: In travel scenarios, in addition to supporting first-person perspective photography and video recording to free up users' hands, they are also deeply integrated with Baidu Map's location service capabilities, Baidu Search, and Baidu Baike's "question-answering" capabilities, allowing users to ask questions while walking and understand history, culture, customs, and local conditions anytime and anywhere.

Meanwhile, in life scenarios such as going abroad, attending meetings, studying, visiting museums, etc., Xiaodu AI Glasses support real-time translation and can also intelligently analyze photographed content, distill and summarize information, becoming a "portable encyclopedia" for users, akin to the canned little people in Zheng Yuanjie's fairy tales, helping users understand the world anytime and anywhere.

Moreover, multimodal input capabilities also elevate the user experience to the next level: When reading or studying, pointing at key content with a finger allows Xiaodu AI Glasses to add the highlighted text to memos - compared to the entertainment aspect of VR glasses, the practicality of AI glasses is an indisputable fact.

Of course, not everyone can fly in the wind, and for the deep-rooted smart glasses track, manufacturers need a profound foundation in AI + hardware.

2. AI Glasses Reach "Technological Maturity": "Integration of Software and Hardware" is the Key to Success

In fact, behind the "market high-speed" of AI glasses lies not only a high degree of fit with application trends but also "right place, right time, right people" in terms of technology. Gartner once proposed the "Hype Cycle of Emerging Technologies": After the birth of a new technology, it will go through the Technology Trigger, Peak of Inflated Expectations, Trough of Disillusionment, and finally the Slope of Enlightenment. At this stage, the value and growth potential of the new technology are actually accepted by the market, and the deployment model gradually matures.

AI glasses, which are "crossing the river by feeling the stones" of VR and AR glasses, are obviously in a mature stage. Meanwhile, the gradual maturation of industry software and hardware technology development and production-research chains has paved the way for the marketization of AI glasses.

Firstly, at the hardware level, developments in chips, sensors, batteries, etc., have become increasingly mature, reaching a stage where devices can be further miniaturized; secondly, in the software domain, the rapid development of AI large model technology and advancements in multimodal, reinforcement learning, speech recognition, semantic understanding, and other capabilities have brought a broader imagination space for AI to reshape smart glasses.