While AI eyeglasses may seem an innovation set to come about in the near future, the first eyeglass lens developed using AI technology was actually launched in 2020 by French lifestyle and sports company Bolle. The team at the company’s state-of-the-art lab analyzed 20 million combinations of lens formulas using an advanced AI algorithm to identify the lens combo that offered the very best depth perception and color enhancement to support the active lifestyle of their customers.

Today, AI is finding more applications in the eyewear industry than ever before, with exciting developments continuing to come thick and fast in this sector.

The Next Generation of Smart Glasses

Smart glasses may already be an established technology, but experts believe that AI is set to power the next generation of smart glasses, providing a plethora of advanced tools and features to their wearers and blurring the boundary between the real and the virtual world.

In 2022, the founder and CEO of Biel Glasses, Jaume Puig, won the HIMSS Global Patient Innovator Award for his creation of smart glasses that deploy AI and mixed reality tech to help people with impaired vision navigate their surroundings more safely and confidently. The clear glasses use AI to allow wearers to detect obstacles, navigate turns, and ascend and descend stairs.

Experts believe that this type of device, as opposed to an AR headset, gives the wearer a sense of both the physical and digital world simultaneously, thereby providing a more natural experience.

Lipreading AI Eyeglasses

One of the newest developments in the AI eyeglasses field is the recent invention of AI spectacles that use the technology to recognize up to thirty-one unspoken commands based on mouth and lip movements, which could help the millions of people in the USA living with speech challenges. These glasses are designed to help those who have speech impediments or difficulty speaking by making communication with others easier.

The device uses very little power and has an interface that requires just a few minutes of user interaction to enable it to recognize commands – and it can be run on a smartphone, too.

The AI Glasses that are Helping the Blind to Read and Recognize Faces

In 2022, the company Envision launched AI-powered glasses to assist blind and visually impaired individuals in their daily lives. The glasses work by extracting various information from images and then speaking this back to the user in over sixty languages. The glasses incorporate an 8MP camera and scan handwritten and digital text from surfaces, including book pages, labels, and letters.

The device can be used to give a detailed description of an outdoor scene and also to make secure, private video calls to trusted users. Additional features include light and color detection, and facial and object recognition, meaning that wearers can be made aware when a light is on, find personal belongings, and identify colleagues instantly.

Helping Us Find Our Perfect Pair of Glasses

AI is already being widely used to help us find the perfect pair of glasses that suit our style and face shape just right. Both desktop and mobile browsers can be used to scan the face and allow us to virtually try on various frame styles, as well as colors and lens tints.

AI technology measures the distance between a user’s pupils to ensure the best frame size for both eyeglasses and sunglasses.

Generative AI-Enabled Glasses

AR glasses featuring generative-AI technology are set to transform how we interact with both physical and virtual spaces. This tech will allow the wearer to effectively transpose the world of their imagination into their physical environment.

For example, rather than manually coding, voice recognition will be deployed to communicate the user’s vision via the AI glasses, which will then immediately appear in front of them. This will bring about a paradigm shift in the gaming arena, with personalized, ultra-immersive gaming experiences becoming first facilitated and then the new normal. Further, gamers’ behaviors will be analyzed by these devices to provide an even more bespoke gaming world for them to inhabit.

The Future of AI Glasses

In the near future, it’s likely that we’ll see AI glasses designed to help or facilitate a wide range of tasks and activities, such as identifying plants and trees on a hike (to avoid touching anything dangerous, like poison ivy) or instructing users on a DIY project as they work. It’s even possible that AI smart glasses will soon be used by clinicians as part of remote diagnosis.