Facebook rolled out its first pair of “smart glasses” Thursday. The device will allow wearers to listen to music, capture photos, answer calls, and film short videos.
The new glasses were created in partnership with EssilorLuxottica, a glasses company known for making Ray-Bans. The new glasses, called Ray-Ban Stories, are being sold now for $299.
The glasses have two small cameras embedded into the frames that sync into an app called Facebook View, where users can edit the photos and share them across social media platforms. Additionally, users are able to instruct the glasses to take photos or videos with only their voice. Wearers will also be able to take phone calls and listen to music.
Facebook said it will not use the information obtained through the glasses without consent and will not use gathered data for personalizing ads.
Although Facebook makes most of its money through advertisements via its websites, the company also has an interest in creating consumer-augmented and virtual reality devices. The company has already released VR headsets and is reportedly working on wristband technologies to support new VR glasses. However, it is still approximately 5-10 years from adding virtual objects into the glasses, according to Facebook’s chief scientist.
Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg announced last month that the company is creating a team to develop the “metaverse” — a shared virtual environment that Zuckerberg called the next mobile internet.
Other major corporations such as Amazon, Snapchat, and Google are also in the research and development phase of augmented glasses, though Snapchat does not believe it will have any glasses ready for market for another decade.