You know when you’re in a noisy bar, trying to have a conversation, but you’re missing every other word because of the nonstop din?
Okay, maybe this one is just for those of us who went to a lot of deafeningly loud concerts when we were young. But take our word for it: it’s a real thing, and it’s infuriating.
That’s why this new Wired piece is so intriguing. It’s about a subspecies of smart glasses designed for a single core purpose: adding closed captions to whatever conversation they pick up and displaying it on a tiny in-lens screen, like subtitles on a movie or show. (They often have a few related features as well, like translation and transcription.)
The appeal is twofold. The first is that it’s just a cool concept, especially for those of us who aren’t quite ready for full-fledged hearing aids, and one that the underlying tech seems to finally be catching up with.
The second is more sociological. Smart spectacles like Ray-Ban’s Meta AI glasses have caught a tidal wave of backlash for incorporating sneaky cameras that the worst people alive are using to record folks without consent and worse. The privacy concerns are immense, Meta itself seems completely unprepared for the conversation, and even the much-hated ICE is getting in on the fun. The situation’s gotten so bad that Meta’s specs have picked up the distinctly unflattering nickname of “pervert glasses.”
This subcategory of live-caption glasses neatly sidesteps almost all those controversies, though. Since they’re built for a single main purpose, they typically don’t feature a camera at all. Some can pull up certain other information in their built-in display, like maps, but it’s hard to imagine a pair causing the type of Google Glass-esque scandal that specs built around surveillance inevitably kick up.
Wired exhaustively tested numerous models on the market, and its top pick by a long shot were the Even Realities’ G2 Smart Glasses. They’ve got even more info here.
More on smart glasses: Students Renting Smart Glasses to Cheat on Tests
The post These Smart Glasses That Show Captions of What Everyone’s Saying Without a Creepy Spy Camera Actually Seem Pretty Awesome appeared first on Futurism.
