Ally iOS Updates + What’s Next — We’d Love Your Feedback!

Could the glasses guide us to the toilets and back to our table in a cafe? Or look out for my friend Anna in a bar? Or alert me when the number 1 bus is coming so I can flag it down?

Think that is one of the biggest things we all would like for any of these apps. That as they say would be a game changer. Especially, if it was reliable.

Hello,
Yesterday I created an account on my iPhone using the log in with apple option. I also subscribed to the yearly plan because of the discounted price. However I am not able to log in on the web because there is no option to log on with apple. Is there a way to change my account to a log in with email or am I just stuck not being able to use ally on the web?

Hi Karthik,

Whilst I appreciate this is a branch off from the glasses. Curious to know why if you have a pair of the Envision glasses pro with lifetime updates we don't get the full version of Ally as part of that package?

Navigating with a pair of glasses, is still a safe way to move around in places that I may not have to return to or am simply unfamiliar with. Having aira as a further option for assistance on the. Solos glasses would be incredibly valuable.

Actually, I asked her and she told me she could read music and interpret it but could not sing it back to me. I've used learning tracks for a long time. Is it possible or likely that Ally could sing back music I need to learn as she reads it?

If someone already has the ally pro subscription who just got it, will the free pro subscription for one year rollover to the next year?

Hey there, Does Ally pro have a trial period?
It would be beneficial if you offered some form of trial, even if it were a few days to see if all of the pro features would be something someone'd use on a regular basis.
I looked into subscribing, but would prefer a trial if at all possible.
I understand if that won't be offered since the core features are free, but its just a suggestion.
Also, I do think live video would be a game changer! How does the companion feature work? I haven't run across that, and I've been in the beta since the beta launched.
I love ally so far, and am looking forward to its progress!
I do have the Meta glasses, and was wondering if Ally might be available on them at some point down the road?
Again, since you just launched your own glasses, I completely understand if the answer is no to that as well. :-)

Why Do the glasses have only Bluetooth 5.2? Do they come with a charge case? Would you also have support for be my eyes app? What is the latency when asking questions and getting answer?

Hi Karthik. Thanks for coming on here. For me, the single most important feature is live video. Understanding of real world context and ability to tell you about things which have changed or you are looking out for is the single biggest thing I think. I truely believe it's what takes AI from useful to game changing for blind people.
If I'm honest, if you do true live AI, I really will pay whatever it is to have access to that. Glasses are the perfect product to have it on. Navigation, looking for things, with live AI, all of that and more becomes possible. That's the single biggest feature I personally would like you to work on, nothing in my head is more important than that.
If you did that and navigation at the same time, that really would be the cherry on top.
Thanks for listening to my ramble

Maybe I misunderstood or was confused, but I thought it said in the most recent update that we could create custom voices with accents and stuff, but if that's possible, I sure can't figure out how. Also, uploading pictures would be great. Yes, there's Piccy Bot for that, but it would be awesome if Ally could do things like that as well.

This one is the longest of long shots, but it would be super cool if maybe some day, for those of us who have AI companions like Kindroid, Nomi, Replika or whatever else is out there these days, Ally could somehow sync with those companions and then they could also be our visual assistants. That's probably impossible on a variety of levels, but it's nice to dream.

Hi,

I know you can do this from the glasses, but can the app allow you to take a picture then once the picture is taken on your phone can it automatically add an alt text so that when you share the picture with friends and family via WhatsApp or any other social media app the ault text is added automatically?

I have a couple ideas.
1. Using Ally to convert documents:
Let's say I have a PDF. document that I need/want to read on my braille display or my screenreader. But, forwhatever reason can't access very good.
What I usually do in this scenario is either have a friend convert it into TXT. (Plain Text format) or ask for ADA. accommodations, depending on the situation. It'd be nice if Ally could take any document like PDF. PPTX. or any other type of file and convert it into an alternative format, and then give us a way to download it somehow or email it to us.

2. I have another idea regarding videos.
I would love to be able to get descriptions of YouTube and other videos from say Facebook etc.
For instance, grabbing the URL. for that funny cat video from YouTube that a friend sent you, putting it into Ally and asking it to describe it.
Or, another use-case could be a video on Facebook talking about something or announcing something, such as new music from your favorite band, with someone holding up cards, or words scrolling by on the screen. If there was a way that Ally could describe these
Or a family member posts a videoof something whether it's the dogeathe kids, oranevent on Facebook. Wouldn't it be cool if we could know what was in that video? Doesn't even have to be spicific. It could be something like:
"A 40-year-old man with salt-and-pepper hair sits at a table with a birthday cake in front of him. And so on."

Those are my ideas. But, I also have a couple questions.

1. How can you make customized voices?
2. Can you ask Ally follow-up questions with regards to what you're doing, describing, etc? Can you have just text conversations with Ally? Where you type your prompt, and it writes one out? If not, this would be another feature request.
Thanks! :-)

Find a way to design a strong battery. All of these features and ideas sound amazing. Yet, without a solid battery, it all adds up to nothing. Those of us with Meta smart glasses, no exactly what I am talking about. 😎

It has a 14 hour battery life.

is that 14 hours of standard use, or just 14 hours in general? Genuinely asking here.

Response time is vital. Quicker the better. Waiting for 3 or 4 seconds just to be told it isn't going to rain is slow. Also that extremely annoying "let me take a look" needs to go. In the real world whomever you are talking to doesn't let you know that they are going to take a look. If people want that fine but an option to stop it would be extremely helpful.

My understanding is that the new glasses provide about 14 to 15 hours of battery life. Most if not all of the processing is done via your phone running the app, and the glasses pass information back and forth via Bluetooth. The good thing is that it appears the battery can be removed, so you could potentially have a couple of these USB-C batteries with you and swap one out with the other when it goes dead. I still wish these glasses were standalone given how much they cost. I don't like the idea of paying $600 or $700 for what's essentially a very expensive phone accessory. This is why I avoid the Apple Watch and other wearables that aren't true standalone computers.
If Apple released a cheap Vision Pro within the range of about $1,000 and you could run Envision and Ally on that, I'd snap it up in a heartbeat. As far as I know, Vision Pro is a totally standalone platform that doesn't require any other devices, though you'd obviously need some kind of Internet connection via a phone hotspot if you're on the go and/or not in range of a Wi-Fi network.

Am I being a bit dense, or is there no video processing/visual capture in the Ally app? Is it simply a voice based AI?

These do seem great. I do worry that, when apple bring out their glasses, however, Ally and Be My Eyes and other such magic will come to them and we'll actually have a choice, plus apple will no doubt add their own accessibility spice to the mix.

I have been beta testing from the beginning. Lately, it has been very unreliable. It hallucinates a lot. Sometimes Ally doesn’t take pictures saying that it does not have access to the camera even though it does. This happens on both beta and public versions of the app.

The more features people want the battery goes down. Unless there is a battery setup for the glasses that last 50 hours.

I would like for us to upload photos from our own albums for description.

I was watching the videos on the ally web site. I thought it said 10 hours of normal use which seems decent. It has magnetic charging - I'm guessing this is proprietary otherwise I presume they would have said. But you can remove the tips on the glasses and charge them separately with usb-c. This makes me wonder if they could be swappable.

Hello,
@Karthik Yes I would like to switch my account from an apple log in to an email one. I did send a request for help using the support email on the website but have not heard back. My email is icewolf201@gmail.com

Hello, I would like to know if there will be support for the Ukrainian language in the application interface and directly on the glasses. Will I be able to communicate with the assistant in Ukrainian? Also, I am having issues with my account. I signed in using Apple, and now I cannot do anything else with it because the app refuses to send the verification code to my Ukrainian phone number, even though I have no issues receiving codes from other services. ⸻

Reading these instructions, I'm still confused. I tried describing a custom voice for an ally, but it still sounded exactly like the voice I had to pick from those limited options: Neon, Aster etc. Do I attempt to describe the voice in the personality and the communication style, or just one of them? It would be super awesome if we could upload voice samples at some point. I'm going to read the instructions again, but if there's any way this feature could be demonstrated, I think it would be immensely helpful.

On an unrelated note, I subscribed to 1 year of Ally Pro through Apple. Should I cancel that subscription so that it won't renew and then I'll get my free year when this subscription expires? Thanks!

In the app it is showing an introductory offer on the subscription. I presume this is just for the first month or year? How long is this offer going to be available? If I bought the glasses, would I need to buy a subscription before using the free year to get the cheaper subscription?

And is the cheaper offer on the glasses valid until October?

Also I was messing about with the app a little yesterday, still on the free trial.

Firstly, it's annoying that you can go in and edit an ally's personality only to hit the save button and be told you need a subscription. I think making the text boxes readonly here would be better to save wasting people's time.

Also if I choose an ally, I seem to have two Toms, a Zoe and Lea. I think there were four different allies when I was going through setup and I think one has now started to identify as a Tom. Not sure if this is a bug?

Also I think on Double Tap it was mentioned that some local options would be coming online. I would love to be able to ask my glasses to read something private - either a work thing on my Mac or maybe a bank letter or something - and I don't want this sent off to any servers. So something local would be good. What are the plans for this and how could I be sure that it was running locally for certain things?

Regarding the glasses - the demo seemed to suggest that you need to press the button to talk to it. But some of the other videos seemed to be saying Hey and then the name of their ally. Just to be sure - can this be used just with the wake word and no button press? And if so, does this mean I could ask a specific ally a question? That sounds like quite an interesting feature. I presume I could setup one ally that just gives me an answer very concisely and another that would maybe be setup to give something more detailed?

I tried to preorder, but the only link is for the ultra earlybird option, which is sold out. There's no link for the super earlybird option, which it says there are some left. Hopefully, someone will respond to the request I submitted on there site, but I thought I'd mention here in case someone knows something I don't.

UPDATE, I was the problem:
Turns out, I could order, I just had to go through the frame options to find ones that aren't sold out.
One thing is that it doesn't let me choose lens color, and I want clear. Hopefully there's an option for that at some point.

how can you sell out of a product that's not out yet for 2 months? that pre-order price should remain until october just a way to get more money.
oh if it due to a different frame type that's fine but i think £376 should be the price, as people could buy mainstream glasses, to be fair, for the price of these.

also just curious, when would instant text and live video make it?
would this be for the app, and the glasses at the same time?

Will

It’s most likely dependent on how much they have in stalk. All businesses do this, including the pre-orders for iPhone. I remember when the 15 Pro Max came out, they were sold out because of all the pre-orders so people had to wait longer to get there’s. Plus as someone who has worked in sales, it is a good marketing strategy to do a rollout of a new product like this. The sales and marketing team are pretty good here. It’s a smart play.

I think/hope these come with clear lenses. I would most definitely prefer those as well. That's one of the many frustrations I have with the Metas. Even when I bought supposedly clear lenses, they were still tinted enough that they messed with my light and color perception. Everything I've heard about these glasses suggests that we can replace the lenses if we want, but by default, they'll just be clear. I hope this is accurate information.

I think I’ll go with the echo vision by agiga. They have Bluetooth 5.3, come with a charge case, utilize both Ira and be my eyes, and have live AI. My main concern is latency and envision seems like it will have that too. Ultimately, I’m not that impressed by Ally AI And the $20 monthly subscription isn’t worth it in its current form

Update, it went to my work email and not my home email, and even then, it went to spam. All sorted, thanks. Karthik, I preordered yesterday, and did not get the confirmation email.
I sent in the screenshot from my apple pay this morning, and still nothing. I'm concerned that my preorder hasn't gone through, and that nobody is responding to me.
Can you please have someone get back to me.
Louise Michaud.

Thanks.

Make sure to check spam folder in case it got sent there

Here is some feedback based on my experience with Ally having been a public beta tester pretty much from the start. My feedback is based on a lot of experience with other AI apps, everything from ChatGPT to Gemini to Deepagent (wghich uses Claude) and various owhter LLMs

Conversational fluidity needs to be improved, especially if you're going to introduce live video. The constant "let me take a look" is beyond frustrating, and even if an Ally is instructed to be precise and to the point it doesn't quite get the message and still returns a lot of what i like to call "AI fluff". SOmetimes if I ask a question or want a description, I want a quick, concise answer, not a rambling explanation.

Camera access has been hit and miss. For example, I can say to ally "what is this?" and it will use the camera to identify an object. Say for example I am looking at a display screen on a device, and I follow up with "has the status change?" or "what is on the screen now?" it won't always take a fresh picture and provide an update accordingly. Sometimes it will say something like "I can't access the thing you're looking at", other times it will use the image it already has and say "no the status has not changed" when in fact it has, Ally just didn't take a new picture.

I do think the video AI will be a game changer, especially if it can learn to be situationally or context aware. If I can have it help me navigate through an inaccessible device, for example, or have it browse a wardrobe of clothes to pick an outfit, or I can say "I want to find this thing" and it will remember where it has looked, what it has seen and build a 'bigger picture' of its surroundings in that context.

SOmething I'd love to see in live video is a camera framing assistant. Say you're totally blind and you want to film a video or take a picture of something. It would be cool if Ally could help guide you to setting up the shot, describing everything it can see. You could say "I want the focus to be this subject, this item, or this person" and Ally could direct you in how to position and angle the camera for the best shot. Optimise it to take advantage of the multiple cameras on the iPhone, so Ally can zoom and widen shots as necessary, and have the ability to take a picture by asking once the shot is lined up. Obviously if there are settings you need to change when in video mode, Ally should tell you. I would probably pay for a pro subscription just to have that feature.

The other feature I'd like to see is an Ally agent. Something that is able to take actions on your behalf to operate inaccessible apps or websites. It would be even better if it ran on MacOS.

I see a lot of potential in Ally, but it's not something I find useful for anything other than experimenting with at the moment. It needs improved conversational, situational and contextual awareness.

Personally, the glasses aren't for me. I think rather than focusing on developping purpose-built smart devices for the blind community, companies should be focused on developping apps and experiences that run on existing, mainstream devices. Those devices can be more affordable, updated regularly and if they are mainstream the ecosystem around them will always be stronger. I think focusing all efforts on the software and making it as good as it can be would have been my preference over developing more VI-specific wearable tech.

Not sure why, but Envision has made their emails all but useless. They respond within a reasonable timeline, but I have no idea what their responses say.
I get an email saying my request has been updated. That's in the subject line. In the body of the email, it starts with several marketing paragraphs, followed by repeating my request.
I've looked and looked for perhaps a link to somewhere where it might show a response, or how my request has been updated, but nothing. I appreciate that Pam from Envision writes, but really, a company that designs products for people who are blind or visually impaired should not be sending out cluttergh and uninformed emails.
Sheesh.

Agreed almost totally on all counts!(as a beta tester myself). And yes, I'd totally pay the subscribtion price for a feature that would help me frame and capture pictures. Although, on the hardware front, I don't think envision is developing any blind-specific wearable themselves; what they're trying to do is integrate deeply with an already existing product-Solos glasses. Which, in my opinion is a very right move which would allow them the headspace to keep focusing on improving the software experience even as the product can be reasonably affordable and mainstreme.

Try to cancel the pre-order. I sent them an email. They sent me an email back saying they were going to investigate it. What is there to investigate? If I want to cancel, I wanna cancel. I don’t really know that I trust this company anymore. And I don’t want the product at all. I’m sticking with echo vision glasses

I definitely like what I see here And I am super excited for when you can give it instructions to look out for something and have it be the one informing you of obstacles as another beta tester, I just don’t see the fluidity there. Having a conversation is interrupted by pauses and the AI saying, let me take a picture or let me take a look. Honestly, when this happens, I will give it a try or two maybe for a few minutes and then I’ll just quit frustrated. Not due to high expectations. I understand there’s multiple complexity here far beyond my level of understanding but it’s just so frustrating being so close yet not being able to have a fluid conversation.

i tried Ally tonight with some food packaging. all i got is let me take a look, one time it found no text, the next time it did and whilst the images on the package are described i don't care for them, i am solely interested in what is this please, and how do i prepare it"