I have now noticed when doomscrolling on Instagram that there is sometimes a little label on the clips saying ‘Shot with Ray-Ban Meta’.
I have also found, on the Meta AI app, something called ‘Vibes’, which is basically Instagram videos but they are entirely AI-generated (or ‘AI slop’ as some call it).
I can use the app within my phone to access my photos, taken with the glasses or not, and edit them, turn them into video, or get ‘inspiration’ for fun ways to edit with AI.
It is here that I am starting to see the pull of the glasses. They are not really AI glasses, they are media glasses.
You capture more video, you take more photos, and you edit those photos and videos with AI.
I have to admit, I like the way that AI makes me look when I ask it to edit a photo of myself. I suspect we all do.
This mixes well with the various viral trends of making yourself into various things using AI – for example, a Studio Ghibli animation, or a doll flatpack.
So one of the uses of AI, visually speaking, seems to be to alter, remix, or create ‘fun’ edits of things that constitute the self.
Aside from that though, we can ask to what extent social media image, or digital photographs, do this already.
I have to admit that despite my rule of not using the camera to take personal photos of individuals, I can definitely see the utility here. Being able to take photos hands free, if you are holding things, and doing it with a voice activation is a legitimately cool and useful feature.
In certain workplaces, where photographs are necessary but your hands might be otherwise indisposed (like an engineer), this could be helpful – it seems this is where Google Glass found a niche market anyway.
I could see this becoming a part of daily life, if we shelve the privacy issues for a moment.
Cameras are becoming a bigger and bigger part of the fabric of daily life, and it is not just CCTV run by governments or institutions, we are choosing to purchase and integrate them into our existence.
Dashcams in cars, Ring Doorbells, Bodycams, Gopros, Webcams, Security Cameras. These are just a few of the examples I can think of. Children’s watches also now have cameras built in for video calling.
The rationales behind each of these devices vary, but are often either a) security b) deterrence c) communication.
Through these justifications, self and other surveillance has become normalised. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong – it’s just fact.
At the same time, the self-identity aspect of social media and networked society propels us to create further images, including non-existent AI facsimilies of real images.
I have noticed that since photography is now so easy, even though I am not much of a social media poster, I am taking more photographs for myself. Here is one I took out on a run.
I chose to take this photo because I thought it was a deserted path, and an incredible view. But I also know that many other people have taken photos of this exact view today. How much value does this photograph add, and what is my need to document it? A friend of mine always says when someone pulls out their phone to take a photo “are you going to look at that again?” and in the majority of cases, the answer is no.
I don’t know that is the best reason for taking a photo – that you will look at it again and reminisce. I don’t know if that should be the standard by which we decide to take a photo or not.
What I do know, is that with the physical barriers to taking photos gone (now all I need to do is say “hey…take a photo”), I will take more, and I will video more, simply because I can.
I am basically becoming more open to documenting my entire life digitally, because it is easy to do so. And just like with a dashcam, who knows when I might need it?
This reminds of me an episode of Black Mirror, ‘the entire history of you’, in which a ‘grain’ allows you to scrub back through your entire life.
There are parallels to draw there, but perhaps we will also begin to augment these documents.
Maybe the movie our lives will be improved, edited, and enhanced with AI.
And it won’t be private, and in our heads. It will be shared with everyone.
Postscript: a few days after drafting this, I stumbled across a preprint
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.03486
VisionClaw: Always-On AI Agents through Smart Glasses
This is well worth a read, and a quote that quite spookily matches this post:
“It is becoming feasible to capture 24/7 audio and video soon. This raises an interesting question: what if AI
agents accumulate the memory of our entire life? Our deployment offers a glimpse, with two key implications”
Maybe that Black Mirror episode isn’t so far away.
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