Meta’s Ray-Ban AR Glasses Enable AI Queries in French, Italian, Spanish
Meta’s Ray-Ban AR glasses now support AI in French, Italian, and Spanish for intelligent voice queries.
It took a little while, but Meta now says that users of its Ray-Ban Meta AR glasses in France, Italy, and Spain can now start getting some AI features.
With Meta AI, people in those countries can now ask general questions like “What are some good gift ideas for my kids who are 6 and 8?” by speaking to the device. As part of the update, Meta AI now works with French, Italian, Spanish, and English.
In a blog post, the company said, “Since we launched in September 2023, we have been hard at work making sure that Ray-Ban Meta glasses comply with Europe’s complex regulatory system.” “We’re excited to start bringing Meta AI and its cool features to some EU countries, and we hope to soon add more EU countries to our list.”
The update won’t include the multimodal features that come with Ray-Ban Meta glasses in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. For example, you won’t be able to ask questions about what the camera on the glasses sees (e.g., “Tell me more about this landmark”). Meta says “in the future,” it will expand multimodality to more countries.
Meta has previously said it wasn’t sure if it could follow the AI Act, which is an EU law that sets up rules and laws for AI. It said that the law’s implementation was “too unpredictable.” The company is also worried about parts of the GDPR, the EU’s privacy law, that deals with training AI.
Meta trains its AI models, including the ones that power the features of its Ray-Ban Meta glasses, on the public data of Instagram and Facebook users who haven’t chosen to be anonymous. In Europe, GDPR protects this data.
Meta Faces EU Scrutiny Over GDPR Compliance
Early this year, EU regulators asked Meta to stop training on European user data while they checked to see if the company was following GDPR rules. Meta gave in, but they also signed an open letter that called for “a modern interpretation” of GDPR that doesn’t “reject progress.”
Meta said in early fall that it would start training again on U.K. user data after “incorporating regulatory feedback” into a new opt-out process.
Soon after, the company added some AI features to Ray-Ban Meta glasses in the UK and six other countries. Meta hasn’t said anything new about how its model training works in the rest of the bloc.
