Thirty years after losing his eyesight in the Gulf War, a veteran can see again thanks to a pair of Meta AI smart glasses.
“The moment I put these glasses on, I instantly realized that this was revolutionary,” said Don Overton, who served with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and was blinded in an ordnance bunker explosion.
Last weekend at a lunch hosted by Meta at the Waldorf in Washington, DC, — part of White House Correspondents’ Dinner events — Overton shared his experiences with the glasses with political officials and tech executives.
The smart specs — which activate by voice command and can be used as a virtual personal assistant — can help him identify the color of the clothing in his closet, read him menus when he’s out for dinner with his wife, recognize faces and even provide navigation as he walks outside. An audio system sits close enough to his ear so that he can hear it but others can’t.
“All the different adaptive technologies that I’ve tried in 30-plus years were never capable of giving me the levels of independence that I was able to receive with these glasses and to be able to really lighten the burden on my wife, Peggy, who’s been a tremendous caregiver in assisting and supporting me,” Overton said.
When Meta’s glasses first launched in 2021, they were essentially glasses with a camera — able to snap photos, record short videos and pipe music through an open-ear speaker.
Last September, the company rolled out a new version with AI capabilities. The specs can now see what the wearer sees and process the world around them — answering questions about their surroundings, translating conversations live and remembering details from earlier in the day.
Meta has partnered with the VA to provide the glasses directly to blind veterans.
Over the last year, sales of the glasses have tripled, making them Meta’s fastest-growing consumer electronics product.
The glasses were a focal point of the Meta luncheon, which celebrated small business, and they also received an unexpected shoutout Saturday night.
The WHCD entertainer this year, mentalist Oz Pearlman, said he wished he’d been wearing Meta glasses after dropping to the floor next to the President following gunshots.
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“Seeing [Trump’s] face a foot away — I’ll never forget that. It’s a photo in my mind forever. I wish I had Meta glasses on and I’d have that photo,” he said.
Even Melania Trump had a Meta glasses moment. On Tuesday, at a White House event with King Charles and Queen Camilla, a student in attendance offered the First Lady the chance to try on a pair. She did, while the Queen demurred.
The same AI powering the glasses is now being aimed at the 200 million small businesses on Meta’s platforms.
Friday’s luncheon highlighted small business owners already using Meta’s tools — among them LaMonique Cosmetics from Lodi, NJ; Live Bearded from Tempe, Ariz.; Bennett Orchards from Frankfort, Del., and Heart and Soul Designs from Altadena, Calif.
Last month, Meta launched its Small Business Initiative. It aims to equip the 250 million small and medium businesses on its platforms with new AI tools. Meta’s ad technology was already linked to $550 billion in US economic activity last year, supporting 3.4 million jobs. The company is now betting smaller enterprises will fuel its next growth phase as its core ad business faces mounting legal pressure.
Dina Powell McCormick, who spearheaded Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Businesses initiative before joining Meta full-time in January, is leading the company’s SMB push alongside head of product Naomi Gleit.
“Only 20% of American small business owners are using AI,” said McCormick. “The 20% that do use AI increase their revenue dramatically and their market share. And so one huge mission that we have, especially since we have 200 million small business owners on the platform, is to make sure that they’re AI literate, to be advocates for that, obviously to proudly engage our tools on that.”
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth said he wants to give everyone the tools he wishes his family’s horse ranch had when he was growing up.
“There’s not enough hours in the day if you’re running a small farm. I want to give everybody those tools — to help people and empower people,” he told me. “Fundamentally, we are trying to give tools to people with the belief that on net, those people are gonna do great things with those tools.”
