Meta and Ray-Ban Stories Smart Glasses ‘Hey Facebook’ Voice Assistant Adds Messenger Controls
Meta (formerly Facebook) has upgraded the voice assistant built into the new Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses with voice commands to control media playback and communicate by text and voice through the Messenger app. The wake word for the voice assistant is still ‘Hey Facebook,’ despite the company’s rebrand to Meta a couple of months ago.
Hey Facebook
The voice assistant is built into the smart glasses, but the update is actually for the new Facebook View mobile app paired to the Stories. Once installed, wearers can follow their Hey Facebook with a request to call or dictate a text message to a contact on Messenger or hear a received message read to them. On the media front, the voice assistant can play or pause audio content, adjust the volume, or check and share the battery’s status. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared the improvements in a Facebook post as seen above, concluding that there will be more features added to the smart glasses next year.
The $300 Ray-Ban Stories come with two built-in cameras, three microphones, and two open-ear micro speakers. The buttons on the sides of the glasses can control the camera, but the voice aspect brings Ray-Ban Stories a lot closer to the growing number of smart glasses in production. The Ray-Ban exclusive designs and the cameras, which activate an LED whenever a photo or video is taken to reduce invasion of privacy concerns, already stand out. Hitting some kind of voice assistant parity with Amazon’s Echo Frames or Anker’s Soundcore Frames will likely be crucial for the Stories to have a happy ending.
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