The ‘um, actually’ guy you know just got infinitely more powerful with these AI glasses

They keep trying to make AI wearables happen. Halliday is the latest attempt to swing for the fences, offering comparatively lightweight glasses frames that house what is described as a “proactive AI agent.” I don’t know about you, but the term “proactive AI agent” inspires in me a visceral reaction, not unlike the one I had recently when a trained stranger tried to pop a contact lens in my eye for the first time.

The Halliday frames are on Kickstarter right now, and the crowd-funding campaign makes a number of big claims. Firstly, the “world’s most discreet display module” is integrated directly into the frames, projecting messages from the allegedly oh-so-helpful onboard AI that only you can see on the inside of your lenses.

The frames come with a Control ring, a wearable trackpad of sorts that discretely allows you to scroll through commands for the onboard AI. For instance, this way you can ask the AI to show you messages from loved ones, transcribe your meetings, or even to attempt live translation of multiple speakers.

The AI agent is “proactive” in that it can also attempt to help before you ask by listening in on your environment. In one example on the Kickstarter, the AI is shown eavesdropping on a conversation about The Beatles. One person offhandedly remarks, “The Beatles’ first album, ‘With the Beatles,’ is my all-time favourite.” The Halliday-wearer, rather than engaging in a mutually enriching conversation about musical appreciation, instead looks to his glasses for the Um Actually riposte that the band’s first album was in fact ‘Please Please Me’ released eight months before.

Apparently weighing only about 35 grams and boasting a 12+ hour battery life, the Halliday glasses are approaching a truly everyday wearable. Just for a start, that scrollable ring is practically fashion-forward compared to some questionable wearables we’ve seen—but is Halliday really a contender?

Last year, Meta unveiled their comparatively funkier, chunkier glasses frames. Called Orion, these holographic AR smart glasses would instead work via a “wrist-based neural interface,” though these frames remain an internal dev kit at Meta that is not yet available to the public. What is available to the public are the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, which allow wearers to livestream, make calls, and for two especially ambitious Harvard students, dox people at a glance.

You could pick up the Ray-Ban Meta frames for $300, or you could drop $399 on Halliday’s super early bird tier. Alternatively, rather than relying on a “proactive AI agent” for Um Actually interjections, might I suggest actually filling your brain with useless trivia instead? For instance, did you know neither Hello Kitty nor Kuromi are actually cats? And I’m just getting warmed up! Wait until you get me started on my actual specialist subject, Miku Hatsune—no “proactive AI” will help you elegantly extricate yourself from that conversation.