Rolling out but a really big update for us:
https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/23/24138228/ray-ban-meta-smart-glasses-wearables-ai-apple-music
We can use whatsapp to video call friends.
Apple music is also coming.
LLM look and ask is available in the US and Canada.
Comments
My head is way to big for…
My head is way to big for that.
I've just ordered a pair though. I'll have a play with VPNs/my dns spoofer and let people know what I find. They're shaping up to be what we need... For now. No subscription too.
WhatsApp video calling and Apple Music working in the UK
As my subject says, I’ve got both Apple Music and WhatsApp video calling working in the UK. The video calling on WhatsApp is excellent, you can simply toggle it on and off by double pressing the capture button. Works brilliantly. Not got the full A I yet, but hopefully not too long now…
You beat me to it
I was just coming on to post about this. That's really good news. Not something I would use a lot but really handy to have it. I hope this comes to the UK. And hopefully followed soon by look and ask - I am getting quite jealous of that now.
That's great news whatsapp…
That's great news whatsapp video calling is in the UK. I'm quite excited to be jumping on board when the feature set has been increased. The idea of recording moments of video with the five mic array is appealing, as is open ear speakers. Whatsapp is certainly my messaging platform of choice so, all sounds good to me.
Yeah, the look ai thing does sound good. I'm going to use it with a VPN to check it out, but it might be that the UK gets it when it's had a chance to mature a bit. Let those lab rats in the states be our beta testers... :)
I'm interested to see if any other ais become accessible through whatsapp and are able to use the video streaming feature. You can use Pi.AI through whatsapp now, but no images. If you could patch through open AI, have a stream going to a server and, basically an open call with your AI, it unlocks a lot of possibilities.
Fingers crossed mine come tomorrow, if DPD sort themselves out, and toes crossed they fit okay. I've gone for the standard size.
Look and ask is almost perfect.
I am loving the Meta glasses, and having the AI feature go live in Canada is spectacular I just wish there was a way to type a question. When I'm in a meeting, I don't want to talk to it, but wouldn't mind asking a question. Another thought would be if I could have a gesture assigned to recognize text.
The silent text recognition command is the only place where I prefered Seleste over Meta. .
Are you getting verbose…
Are you getting verbose descriptions of text? IE, reading the entire document? I'm just getting short summeries.
Video calls using Hey Meta
I was under the impression that you couldn't start a video call direct from the glasses, but it seems that you can.
Firstly, I started a normal WhatsApp video call from the app, and tapped the icon at the top right - device options or something. Then continue, and finally double pressed the camera button on the glasses. Great.
I then ended the call and asked the M guy to video call my wife. It started a call with WhatsApp but it was voice only. So I double tapped the camera button and now I'm having a video call, and that's without having to touch the phone.
That is so good.
I noticed with Apple Music that you are able to ask the glasses to play something specific using the M-guy which is also really nice. Or would be except I use Spotify. With Spotify you only have the weird Spotify tap thing where it will use an algorithm to play random stuff at you that it thinks you might like. So would be nice if they can improve Spotify to work the same way as the tap thing seems a bit rubbish.
All in all a great update. I am trying to use look and ask every day on the off chance it has managed to sneak into the uk unannounced but so far no good. My sighted wife is quite jealous of these glasses I think.
I used a vpn once to spoof…
I used a vpn once to spoof being in the states and got AI, now I don't need the vpn to be on, so it seems it only needs to think you're in the states once.
I've posted elsewhere about this, but I do wish we could use airpods instead of the arm speakers. They aren't much good in a noisy environment... Unless we can and I've missed it? I can get music playing through the airpods but not meta AI. Not tried using it with whatsapp and a video call.
@Ollie
How long has it been working since you disabled the VPN? I found another comment saying that after a little while it stopped working.
I'm struggling to find your post about setting up the VPN. Which one are you using? I presume it isn't free? There are rather a lot of posts on here about these glasses - quite rightly, they are ace.
Yeah, it's rather…
Yeah, it's rather distributed.
It was express VPN that I used. It has also only been a couple of days.
Speech rate
One other thing I think is new is the option to change the speech rate of hey meta, although I was struggling to use the slider. It defaults to 3 (which is 100%), but swiping up did nothing and swiping down put it down to 2 and it then refused to move from there.
I'll have another play with it later though - maybe using a keyboard might help.
Bumping the speed up a tad might be nice, but I don't feel the need to have it going full pelt. I do think the voices are really nice - I don't usually choose male voices but the one on the glasses is great.
VPN
Thanks ollie - I ended up trying proton VPN as it has a free plan. I’m a little wary of 30 day trials as I never know how easy it will actually be to cancel. It looked initially like proton wouldn’t let me change to the US without subscribing but it did work.
I had to close MetaView twice, but the second time the AI stuff came up and I could enable it. Maybe becuse I only asked a Look question after the first time. Anyway I’m now up and running which is awesome!
On a less exciting front, the voice settings are now under Meta AI which took me a while to find. The speech rate box is still unusable for me, even with a keyboard. Oh well, that’s such a tiny thing.
Volume
The volume levels seem to have changed - either as a result of the new version or somehow because it thinks I'm in the US now.
But I usually have it set pretty high - between 80 and 100%. When I used it today the volume felt normal and I asked what it was set to and was told 50%. And now I can crank it up a lot further than before. Once it gets much beyond 50% the quality goes downhill quite a bit, presumably because it's trying to be louder than it can realistically cope with. However this might be quite useful in noisy environments. I didn't get a chance to try it anywhere like that, however.