Wearable tech has been warmly welcomed by the majority of tech-savvy individuals. From smart watches and rings to VR and AR headsets and glasses, they are both useful and entertaining, but have also become a fashion statement and status symbol. However, we have yet to be treated to a truly intuitive, multimodal AI assistant that can offer hands-free, visual, auditory, and informational enhancements without the need for specific command from the wearer.
Now, a Singapore-based startup believes they have developed the first device to truly fit the bill. Their new AI glasses go beyond current AR/VR wearables by encompassing multiple LLMs from various established developers in an effort to provide a seamless AI assistant experience.
Brilliant Labs, the developer behind AI glasses, has launched Frame, which they claim to be groundbreaking eyewear equipped with an integrated multimodal AI assistant. The launch is accompanied by significant funding, led by Niantic CEO John Hanke, a notable investor and AR pioneer, also behind games like Pokémon GO. Frame, driven by the vision of ex-Apple, CEO Bobak Tavangar, promises a transformative shift in daily living, redefining not only how we see but also how we engage with the physical world.
Frame: AI-powered glasses by former Apple executive
Frame, distinguished as the world’s first glasses with an integrated multimodal AI assistant, introduces “Noa,” an always-on AI assistant akin to “Iron Man’s Jarvis.” Noa is powered by an integrated multimodal generative AI system capable of simultaneous operation of multiple AI models. It excels in real-world visual processing, novel image generation, and real-time speech recognition and translation. Frame’s multimodality enables collaboration among multiple AI systems, unlocking limitless applications in everyday life.
The glasses provide hands-free access to next-generation AI within a lightweight and stylish design, paying homage to cultural icons like John Lennon, Steve Jobs, and Gandhi, known for their circular spectacles.
Fresh funding and advisor powerhouse
John Hanke’s funding marks a significant addition to Brilliant Labs’ advisor and investor lineup, including Coho VC, Brendan Iribe (co-founder of Oculus), Adam Cheyer (co-founder of Siri), Eric Migicovsky (founder of Pebble), and other industry luminaries. Brilliant Labs has garnered over $6 million in funding commitments to date.
Bobak Tavangar, CEO, and Co-founder of Brilliant Labs, expressed excitement about Frame’s potential to transform human-device interactions, enabling new experiences in everyday life.
“Frame truly offers a new paradigm in the way humans’ interface with the digital world, and with each other. Noa, a totally new kind of AI virtual assistant, empowers users to engage more with the world around them, not less. Our hope is that Frame enables people to connect with each other in entirely new ways, and opens up new experiences in everyday life, the workplace, the classroom, and more. This is the unique promise of bringing generative AI in front of the human eye,”
Adam Cheyer, co-founder of Siri and participant in the funding round, anticipates Frame’s impact, comparing it to the beginning of the iPhone era.
“Brilliant Labs’ groundbreaking progress, starting with Monocle and now with the launch of Frame, has been inspiring. With a design that is both beautiful and practical for everyday use, Brilliant Labs’ Frame is the first step in ushering in a new era that’ll transform the fabric of how society operates. Frame can enhance our human capacity to organize, access and act on information with the help of its embedded AI assistant Noa. Through its extensible and open AI platform, Brilliant Labs could introduce a new wave of hands-free applications that’s reminiscent of the beginning of the iPhone era,”
Noa, the personalised and personable AI assistant
Behind Frame’s sleek design lies Noa, an always-on AI assistant with a unique personality. Noa leverages a privacy-preserving knowledge graph, analysing user-AI interactions to offer an individually tailored experience. This not only ensures personalised user interactions but also allows Noa to develop a distinctive personality.
Tasks assigned to Noa include summarising book pages, language translation, structuring whiteboard sessions, identifying skin conditions, suggesting daily coffee intake based on nutritional content, and orchestrating multiple AI systems for advanced tasks like emotional sentiment analysis.
Partnership with Perplexity for real-time search
Frame’s partnership with Perplexity marks a revolutionary step in redefining traditional search engine concepts for AI-enhanced glasses. Perplexity, fuelled by Online LLMs, references recent web data for near-instantaneous responses to spoken queries. Users can seamlessly access real-time information from the web, enabling applications like price checks, house hunting, DIY projects, and restaurant reviews.
Features and design
Frame, designed to be indistinguishable from everyday eyeglasses, boasts features that set it apart. Featherwear AI glasses, crafted from engineering-grade nylon plastic, Frame weighs only thirty-nine grams, ensuring comfort for all-day wear. Trendy design, available in classic vintage styling with colour options like Smokey Black, Matte Cool Gray, and a transparent variant named H2O.
Vivid display, with a high-resolution vivid display offering three thousand nits of brightness. Front-facing spatial camera integrates a low-power machine vision camera for accurate world interpretation.
Integrated microphone facilitates voice inputs for a hands-free experience. Multimodal AI, wirelessly connects to phones through Bluetooth 5, supporting simultaneous generative AI inputs from Perplexity, Stability AI, GPT4, and Whisper. 6DoF IMU, an advanced 6-axis IMU in the nose bridge supports menu navigation, step counting, and directions. Custom prescription optics, collaborating with AddOptics, Frame offers precision-bonded prescription lenses. Pre-orders for Frame have now started at $349, with shipping scheduled to begin in April 2024.
Commitment to open source and developer support
True to Brilliant Labs’ commitment to open sourcing, Frame follows in the footsteps of its predecessor, Monocle. The company pledges full support for developers looking to modify both hardware and software, offering resources such as living documentation, open-source codebase, hardware schematics, and adjustable parameters for Noa’s supported AI models.
