This past Wednesday, Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) CEO Sundar Pichai introduced a pair of smart glasses that have the ability to translate languages. During Google's I/O developer summit, Pichai demonstrated a voice demo of the glasses, which can essentially live language translations to the individual who is wearing them in real-time.
These new glasses, known as a form of augmented reality, can translate another language into users' native language of choice through spoken words. A Google product manager informed someone who was wearing the glasses in a demo video, "You should be seeing what I'm saying, just transcribed for you in real time - kind of like subtitles for the world."
One aspect of the glasses that is especially appealing to others is its emphasis on practicality. The ability to understand multiple languages can be quite beneficial and helpful in daily life. Pichai referenced in a recent blog post that Google is working to translate the languages right in real-time, as well as to display text on the lenses. The glasses are black with thick rims and are still in in its initial development stages.
About ten years ago, Google launched the Google Glass, which was another form of smart glasses that did not achieve the popularity the company had anticipated. They were intended to be glasses that dealt more with futuristic features, but the technology failed because there were privacy concerns regarding its built-in camera.
Google's advertisement for its latest smart glasses, however, were much less dramatic and much more subtle. The advertisements for these new smart glasses involved depictions of a mother and daughter talking while looking at photographs, as well as a conversation between someone who was deaf and someone who was not.
Pichai said, regarding his views on augmented reality: "Looking ahead, there's a new frontier of computing, which has the potential to extend all of this even further, and that is augmented reality. At Google, we have been heavily invested in this area. We've been building augmented reality into many Google products, from Google Lens to multisearch, scene exploration, and Live and Immersive views in Maps."