French-Italian eyewear company EssilorLuxottica has extended its partnership with social media giant Meta✴ Platforms with a new ten-year contract to continue their collaboration on smart glasses.
Image source: essilorluxottica.com
The cooperation between EssilorLuxottica and Meta✴ dates back to 2019. Since then, the companies have created two generations of smart glasses under the Ray-Ban brand. Although the first generation of Ray-Ban Meta✴ smart glasses was not immediately popular with consumers, sales of the second generation model, introduced in late 2023, exceeded the previous two years in a few months.
Ray-Ban Meta✴ smart glasses let you make phone calls, listen to music and take photos by pressing a button on the right temple or using voice control. The photos you take can be directly posted to Instagram✴ Stories using a voice command without taking out your phone. The available camera also allows you to broadcast live to your followers on Facebook✴ or Instagram✴.
In May of this year, the wearable device introduced a multimodal artificial intelligence function, which is currently only available to users in the US and Canada. With its help, smart glasses can describe surrounding objects, identify landmarks and read announcements, signs and signs in different languages.
Earlier, The Wall Street Journal reported that the companies discussed the possibility of Meta✴ acquiring a 5% stake in the French-Italian company, but at the moment it is unknown whether they came to any agreement on this matter or not.