CONSUMER

How Meta got AI glasses right with one big change

The best part of Meta's latest AI glasses is a feature that they removed. 

On Wednesday, Meta announced the Meta Ray-Ban Audio glasses, which do not have any cameras, and as a result, weigh less, have better battery life, and are less expensive. But most of all, the glasses let you get the audio and AI benefits without people giving you the stink eye because they think you're wearing spy glasses. 

"The audio features are our most popular features: listening to music, making phone calls, and talking to AI. We thought that by really just focusing on audio, we could make the glasses way slimmer and lighter with way longer battery life," Ming Hua, Meta's VP of wearable devices, told The Deep View. "The whole consideration is to expand into a new segment and give people new options."

Hua said that Meta has been developing the camera-less version for the past two years. During that time, Meta's AI glasses have received bad publicity from consumers and businesses concerned about the glasses recording video of people without their knowledge or permission. At the same time, the glasses have been praised for their surprisingly good audio quality, the convenience and safety of the open-air audio design, and the fact that the glasses are stylish to wear and don't look like a tech product.

Here are the details of the Meta Ray-Ban Audio glasses: 

• 6 microphones (an upgrade from 5 mics on previous glasses)

• 12 hours of battery life (up from 8 hours in Gen 2 Meta Ray-Bans and 4 hours in Gen 1)

• Weigh 43 grams (about 10-20% less than most other models)

• Adjustable temple tips and adjustable nose pads

• Two styles: Clubmaster (looks like 1950s geek glasses) and Burbank (looks like traditional geek glasses such as the Ray-Ban Wayfarer)

• Start at $349

• Begin shipping October 13

And future generations of these audio-only glasses look promising as well, since earlier today Qualcomm announced its Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2, a chip aimed at next-generation audio and voice wearables. 

Meta also doubled-down on audio technology in general by launching a new software feature called Hearing Enhancement, which uses software to turn Meta glasses into an FDA-cleared over-the-counter hearing aid with some very smart features. With a 5-minute onboarding routine, it can understand your hearing and then boost particular frequencies to help. It also has a directional feature that only boosts the audio of the person you're looking at. Since 1 in 6 people suffer from mild to moderate hearing loss and the Meta software is a one-time $149 fee (compared to $1,000 to $8,000 for the average prescription hearing aid), I expect this feature to be very popular when the software starts shipping later this fall.

At the Meta Connect 2026 event this week, I tried the Meta Ray-Ban Audio glasses and the new Hearing Enhancement feature (using a pair of ear plugs to simulate partial hearing loss). Both worked very well and I consider them both welcome developments. After using various models of Meta AI glasses over the past two years, the audio features were by far the most used things for me. But I limited how much I used the glasses because of the cameras and not wanting anyone around me to fear I was invading their privacy. Across all of its Ray-Ban, Oakley, and other product lines, Meta has sold around 10 million pairs of its AI glasses over the past few years. I suspect the Meta Ray-Ban Audio glasses could sell more than all of them combined in the coming year. That's primarily because of the lack of cameras but it's also because of the combination of longer battery life, being lighter and more comfortable, and being less expensive. It also helps that Meta's AI has gotten far more useful, with its Muse app going viral among mainstream users and giving people something interesting to do with the glasses. And for those who want all of the same features without having to wear glasses, Meta teased the Muse Charm, a handheld pendant that will be available at the end of the year.

Disclaimer: Jason Hiner's travel to Meta Connect 2026 event was paid for by Meta. The Deep View's coverage is editorially independent from the companies we cover.

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PRODUCTS

Why OpenAI is giving ChatGPT Voice a bigger job

OpenAI has created an assistant to help you get work done anywhere. 

On Wednesday, the lab released ChatGPT Voice "on-the-go," bringing its voice models to the web and mobile experiences of its agentic tools. The product builds on GPT-Live, its upgraded voice model, by bringing ChatGPT Voice to its Work and Codex experiences.

OpenAI said that this release allows users to get work done whenever they speak to the model. For instance:

• For those with Pro and Plus plans, users can use Voice in ChatGPT Work on mobile to create docs, decks and spreadsheets, work with connected plugins, draft emails, create sites, and talk to Slack. 

• Free and Go users can also use Voice in the chatbot itself to interact with plugins that they've connected to the text model, including tools and connected apps. 

• The voice model is also connected to the text model, meaning that text conversations flow as ChatGPT answers vocally, allowing you to switch seamlessly back and forth between voice and text conversations. The company noted that ChatGPT Voice will become more powerful as ChatGPT itself grows more capable. 

This update comes a day after the company unveiled the latest versions of its flagship product, GPT-6 Sol and Luna, both coming in cheaper than the models of its biggest competitor, Anthropic.

This expansion to ChatGPT Voice's agentic capabilities also comes as a new competitor emerges: Meta's Muse personal agent is rapidly rising in popularity. According to The Information, Muse has surpassed 500,000 users in the first week, including 250,000 daily active users. Muse is outpacing ChatGPT's early mobile launch.

OpenAI is feeling pressure on all sides. The company faces pressure from Anthropic to compete both on frontier model development and on enterprise adoption, while Meta has popped up as substantial competition on the consumer side. This update to ChatGPT Voice may actually address both of those fronts. While bringing ChatGPT Voice to platforms like Codex and ChatGPT Work certainly helps with enterprise adoption, bringing the experience to mobile could provide those same agentic capabilities to a far wider audience. That's where Meta's Muse agent is making such rapid progress by making agents easier for the average user to access. Essentially, this substantial update to ChatGPT Voice is trying to bridge the gap between enterprise and consumer adoption. 

TOGETHER WITH OPSERA

Invite-only AI-SDLC Summit in San Carlos, CA, Oct 1

Opsera is bringing together 100 senior engineering, IT, and product leaders, including confirmed leaders from SpaceX AI, Nvidia, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and PayPal, for a candid afternoon on what's next for AI and software development.

Set at Domenico Winery in San Carlos, CA on October 1, this invite-only gathering includes executive keynotes, real-world enterprise stories, and dinner at the winery.

Request your invitation

GOVERNANCE

How to govern AI without slowing innovation

Can AI move fast and still be safe? As the debate over AI safety and innovation grows more polarized, we explore the practical work of making powerful systems accountable.

In this episode of The Deep View Conversations, we sit down with Navina Singh, CEO of Credo AI, to talk about what AI governance means for frontier labs, enterprises, and policymakers. They explore why governance is broader than regulation, how organizations can test and verify their AI systems, and what happens when capabilities advance faster than oversight.

Topics covered:

• Why Navrina sees AI safety and innovation as goals that can advance together
• What the Hugging Face agent incident raises about frontier AI oversight
• The “spectrum of trust,” from internal testing to independent audits and regulation
• The risk of regulatory capture and the role of open models
• How businesses weigh AI capability, cost, and control while managing "governance debt"
• How Credo AI uses forward-deployed governance experts to help companies put oversight into practice
• Why expertise, taste, and judgment remain valuable as AI takes on more work

If you’re building, buying, or governing AI, this conversation offers a practical way to think about trust without losing sight of the technology’s promise.

📺 Watch on YouTube
🎧 Listen in your favorite podcast player

Subscribe to Deep View Conversations for interviews with the leaders shaping the future of AI, business, and technology: tdv.transitor.fm

LINKS

• Qualcomm chip bets AI wearables can skip the camera (from The Deep View)

• Nvidia's Jensen Huang pushes back on AI doomerism in NYT podcast

• Anthropic says Claude discovered an enzyme system similar to Crispr

• Global AI glasses shipments rose 263% year-over-year

• Pew finds 54% of Americans think data centers are environmentally bad

• AI life sciences startup Basecamp raises $140 million Series C

• OpenAI gives Project Daybreak cyber defenses to Ukraine government

• Patreon co-founder Sam Yam joins OpenAI as Creator Product lead

• Gemini 3.8 Flash and Flash-Lite TTS: Two new text-to-speech models from Google, now the company's "expressive audio generation models yet." 

• FLUX 3 Action: An open weights 7 billion parameter world action model from Black Forest Labs.

• Qwen Intelligence: Personal intelligence agents by Alibaba for planning, mobile use and creative tasks. 

• Gemini Connected Apps: Google is adding several new apps to Gemini, including Airtable, Linear, Squarespace, Peloton and more. 

• YouTube Custom Feeds: Use AI to create dedicated tabs on YouTube for specific moods.

• WorkOS: Applied AI Engineer

• Edison Scientific: Member of Technical Staff, Applied AI Engineer

• Automat: Applied AI Engineer

• Writer: AI engineer

GAMES

A QUICK POLL BEFORE YOU GO