New AI Glasses, A Mixed Reality Headset And More

Meta is about to hold its biggest event of the year. While Connect was once solely dedicated to virtual reality, the event now covers all the company’s hardware projects, as well as AI and the metaverse.

And this year could be even more jam-packed than usual. Between Meta’s ever-expanding smart glasses lineup, its breakneck AI releases and the current industry freakout over the pace of AI development, there’s certainly a lot of ground for CEO Mark Zuckerberg to cover.

Like last year’s event, Meta has again opted for an evening keynote, with Zuckerberg taking the stage at 4PM PT/7PM ET on September 23. There will be additional talks and developer sessions the following day, starting with a 10AM PT/1PM ET “developer state of the union.” As usual, I’ll be on the ground watching the keynote live from Meta’s HQ in Menlo Park so check back for our liveblog and post-keynote coverage. In the meantime, here’s everything I’ll be looking out for during Connect.

As with the last few years, there’s likely to be a lot of glasses-related news. One interesting change with this year’s strategy is that the company is reportedly working on a pair of camera-free frames. These glasses, which will reportedly come in two styles, will instead come with extra microphones for chatting with Meta’s AI assistant. The lack of cameras could offer Meta a couple of advantages. The frames will reportedly be a bit slimmer and look more like “normal glasses.”

More significantly, they could also help Meta address ongoing privacy concerns and backlash against its current lineup of glasses. Meta has been trying to get ahead of the “creep glasses” narrative in recent weeks by cracking down on people who tamper with the LED lights and post videos of themselves harassing others. In a recent AMA on Instagram, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth said the company would have “more to say” about the issue during Connect.

Ray-Ban has recently hinted that it has new Meta-branded glasses coming soon. That could be a reference to these camera-free frames or, perhaps, a new Gen 3 lineup (the first Gen 2 models debuted at last year’s Connect). Another possibility is the next generation of Meta Ray-Ban Display. There have been reports that Meta is working on a version of the glasses that will come with displays in both lenses, which would open up some interesting possibilities in terms of their UI. But it’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about the rumored device, sometimes called “Hypernova 2,” so Meta could be holding that one back for now.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a new headset from Meta, and we’ve never seen anything from them quite like the device currently known as “Phoenix.” The mixed reality headset has been rumored for some time, but it certainly seems like the company is gearing up for it to make its official debut at Connect.

Several images of the lightweight device recently surfaced in a HorizonOS update. Those images show a thin device that almost looks more like a pair of goggles than a headset. It also clearly shows a cable, which supports previous reporting that Phoenix will rely on a tethered connection to a separate puck. It’s also rumored to support hand and eye tracking rather than a dedicated controller.

And while we don’t know much about what Phoenix will look like in the way of specs, it seems like a pretty good bet the headset will be among the first devices to use the new Snapdragon Reality Elite chip Qualcomm announced earlier this year. Intended for mixed reality headsets, the chip was specifically designed to support slimmed-down form factors.

A new kind of headset will probably also mean some updates to HorizonOS, and it will be interesting to see what kinds of experiences Meta will promote alongside the new hardware. The company has been shuttering VR studios left and right, so I doubt we would see any huge game announcements to go with Phoenix. But it does seem like Meta could promote more entertainment-focused offerings. Deadline reported last year that Meta was backing a new “3D horror series” based on A24’s Talk to Me that’s apparently meant for viewing in the company’s headsets.

We may also hear more about Meta’s holographic avatars that we first saw two years ago with its Orion prototype. Meta told me at the time that the technology would eventually come to virtual reality and, given that Qualcomm has highlighted “photorealistic avatars” as one of the benefits of its aforementioned chip, this seems like a very real possibility. The Information also recently reported that an avatar of Meta’s CTO could make an appearance during the Connect keynote. These avatars could also factor into Meta’s evolving vision for the metaverse. When the company almost shut down Horizon Worlds in VR earlier this year, Bosworth said that augmented reality was very much part of the company’s “expansive construct of the metaverse.”

The last few years of Connect have included a lot of AI news and this year shouldn’t be any different. This will be the first Connect since we’ve seen a flood of new AI releases from the company’s superintelligence group, and I’m sure the company is saving some AI-focused updates for Connect.

I fully expect Meta to talk a lot more about its AI agent, Muse. The company teased that glasses support for the agent would be coming “soon,” so I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear more about how this will work at Connect. (Agent capabilities could also be a good selling point for camera-free glasses.)

I’m also hoping to hear more about Meta’s work to bring more third-party apps to its glasses ecosystem. Last year at Connect, the company announced a handful of apps that would be coming to its camera glasses, but we haven’t seen a whole lot of momentum since. And earlier this year it started allowing developers to create dedicated apps for Meta Ray-Ban Display. Showing off a new slate of third-party apps for the frames could be a good way to build more excitement for the product even if we don’t see updated hardware.