Google may be planning a Gemini-powered rival to the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses

In our Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses review, we described the gadget as the best AI wearable on the market at the moment – and it seems Google is ready to get back into the smart specs market with its own pair of augmented reality (AR) glasses.

According to The Financial Times and The Verge, Meta is thinking about buying a stake in EssilorLuxottica, the glasses maker that has partnered with Meta to produce two generations of the AR-enhanced Ray-Bans.

At the same time, Google has also apparently approached EssilorLuxottica about launching another pair of Ray-Bans, this time with Gemini AI on board. It’s not quite Google Glass, but it’s in the same kind of area.

While the reports say it’s unlikely that EssilorLuxottica would cut ties with Meta and partner with Google instead, it’s more evidence that Google is indeed working on a pair of AR specs, and wants to push Gemini into more hardware.

The story so far

Before merging with Essilor, Luxottica actually teamed up with Google for the Google Glass devices, so the two companies do have a history together. It makes sense that they’d want to work together again – even if Google Glass wasn’t a huge hit.

We’ve seen numerous signs that a new and improved take on Google Glass is on the way, including code hidden inside the Google app for Android. We did see some specs briefly shown off at Google I/O 2022, but there’s been little substantial news since.

Back in May, Magic Leap announced that it was working with Google on “Extended Reality (XR) solutions and experiences” but we don’t really know what that’s going to result in. Google is also busy working on XR hardware with Samsung as well.

At Google I/O 2024, we also saw smart specs included in a demo of Project Astra, Google’s vision of how advanced AI could help enhance everyday life – though the specs weren’t specifically referred to, and no official device details have been announced.