These Smart Glasses That Show Captions of What Everyone's Saying Without a Creepy Spy Camera Actually Seem Pretty Awesome

"The appeal is twofold. The first is that it's just a cool concept, especially for those of us who aren't quite ready for full-fledged hearing aids, and one that the underlying tech seems to finally be catching up with. The second is more sociological. Smart spectacles like Ray-Ban's Meta AI glasses have caught a tidal wave of backlash for incorporating sneaky cameras that the worst people alive are using to record folks without consent and worse."

"That's why this new Wired piece is so intriguing. It's about a subspecies of smart glasses designed for a single core purpose: adding closed captions to whatever conversation they pick up and displaying it on a tiny in-lens screen, like subtitles on a movie or show. (They often have a few related features as well, like translation and transcription.)"

"This subcategory of live-caption glasses neatly sidesteps almost all those controversies, though. Since they're built for a single main purpose, they typically don't feature a camera at all. Some can pull up certain other information in their built-in display, like maps, but it's hard to imagine a pair causing the type of Google Glass-esque scandal that specs built around surveillance inevitably kick up."

"Wired exhaustively tested numerous models on the market, and its top pick by a long shot were the Even Realities' G2 Smart Glasses. They've got even more info here. More on smart glasses: Stu"

Live-caption smart glasses add closed captions to conversations and show the text on a small in-lens display, similar to subtitles. Some models also provide related functions such as translation and transcription. The appeal includes a practical accessibility angle for people who are not ready for hearing aids and a technology angle as underlying capabilities improve. Privacy concerns around mainstream smart glasses have grown due to hidden or unwanted recording, leading to backlash and even derogatory nicknames. Live-caption glasses largely avoid these controversies because many models do not include cameras, reducing the likelihood of surveillance-related scandals. Extensive testing identified Even Realities’ G2 Smart Glasses as the top choice.

Read at Futurism