Snap CEO Evan Spiegel Bets Meta Can't Copy High-Tech Glasses

By
Evan Spiegel sees something others don't: a neon-red flag, digitally projected on the lenses of the augmented-reality glasses he's wearing. The co-founder and chief executive officer of Snap Inc. is at Clover Park, next to the company's headquarters in Santa Monica, California, sporting the new Snap Spectacles. Spiegel was originally supposed to demo a basic chess app, but he decides instead that he wants to challenge me to a more complex game of capture the flag.
He guides me through the process, telling me to tap a button that appears through my own Spectacles lenses on my hand—visible to me, invisible to others—and then, from the menu now floating before my eyes, to select the app by pinching the air. We stake our 3D flags near a tree and a picnic table, set up rival bases and prepare to sprint around, using our palms to fire blasts of light at each other like Iron Man.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Yahoo

2 days ago

• Yahoo

Social Media Ban Moves Closer in Australia After Tech Trial

(Bloomberg) -- Australia's world-first social media ban for under-16s moved closer to implementation after a key trial found that checking a user's age is technologically possible and can be integrated into existing services. Security Concerns Hit Some of the World's 'Most Livable Cities' JFK AirTrain Cuts Fares 50% This Summer to Lure Riders Off Roads NYC Congestion Toll Cuts Manhattan Gridlock by 25%, RPA Reports Taser-Maker Axon Triggers a NIMBY Backlash in its Hometown One Architect's Quest to Save Mumbai's Heritage From Disappearing The conclusions are a blow to Facebook-owner Meta Platforms Inc., TikTok and Snap Inc., which opposed the controversial legislation. Some platform operators had questioned whether a user's age could be reliably established using current technology. The results of the government-backed trial clear the way for the law to come into force by the end of the year. The findings also potentially allow other jurisdictions to follow Australia's lead as countries around the world grapple with ways to protect children from harmful content online. 'Age assurance can be done in Australia and can be private, robust and effective,' the government-commissioned Age Assurance Technology Trial said in a statement Friday announcing its preliminary findings. The trial's project director, Tony Allen, said there were 'no significant technological barriers' to stopping under-16s gaining social media accounts. 'These solutions are technically feasible, can be integrated flexibly into existing services and can support the safety and rights of children online,' he said. Under the new law, digital platforms including Snapchat, Meta-owned Instagram, and X will be responsible for enforcing the age limit, with penalties of as much as A$50 million ($32 million) for breaches. The trial tested a range of methods and technologies, including facial scans, inferring a user's age based on their behavior, age verification, as well as parental controls. The tests also took into account the ways teenagers might try to circumvent age checks. 'We found a plethora of approaches that fit different use cases in different ways, but we didn't find a single ubiquitous solution that would suit all use cases,' the trial said in its statement. More than 50 companies participated in the trial, while Apple Inc. and Google, developers of the most popular mobile-phone operating systems, are also contributing, Allen said on a video conference call on Friday. The trial didn't assess public acceptance for any particular technology or the costs involved. The accuracy of the different methods, for example the margin of error for facial analysis, wasn't made available. (Adds details of trial in final four paragraphs.) Ken Griffin on Trump, Harvard and Why Novice Investors Won't Beat the Pros Is Mark Cuban the Loudmouth Billionaire that Democrats Need for 2028? The US Has More Copper Than China But No Way to Refine All of It Can 'MAMUWT' Be to Musk What 'TACO' Is to Trump? How a Tiny Middleman Could Access Two-Factor Login Codes From Tech Giants ©2025 Bloomberg L.P.

Tom's Guide

5 days ago

• Tom's Guide

Exclusive: I asked Snap's hardware chief about the company's next-gen Specs — here's what I found out

So as we found out last week, Snap is finally launching Specs to the public in 2026 — after an exhaustive developer program that spans four years since its first Spectacles AR glasses. It's been a heluva journey, and with Meta's Project Orion on the horizon and Apple being 'hellbent' on delivering smart glasses, this is becoming a very competitive space. So far, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel has said they will be smaller, lighter, and fully standalone with 'no puck' required. But there's a lot we don't know yet. What has been the story that's led to this point where Snap is ready to go for a full public release? What tech can we expect inside these future contenders for best smart glasses? What's the price? And is society ready for true AR glasses like this? I had a chance to sit down with Snap's VP of Hardware, Scott Myers, and put these questions to him. I have to be a little careful with what I say, because we have like fully announced everything. Yeah. But what he said was that it's substantially smaller. So we have been in this area for 11 years, and we have been building these things for a very long time. It's public information that we have made some acquisitions that like our entire opt optical engine is our own custom thing. We build it ourselves. We design it ourselves, which gives us a pretty unique position where we know exactly how these things are going. We have road maps for development and I really like where we're going. And because we're not just a bunch of companies strung together, we're all like one group working all toward the same goal. I can have the team designing, say, the waveguide, talking to the same team that's working on the rendering engine and SnapOS. And that like synthesis is how we end up still confident about where we're at. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. We've been getting feedback in a lot of different forms about the hardware. We've gotten some phenomenal feedback from the community, but also feedback like 'we wish the field of view was bigger,' you know, or that 'the device was lighter.' There's a joke with the team that like, this is what I want [points towards his reading glasses]. It's a question of what I want. It's how we get there. It's the trade-offs we make to go make these like the dream of true augmented reality, something people can wear and walk around. The social acceptability element is so critically important. Context: Since 2020, Snap has been on a bit of a shopping spree — acquiring AI Factory in 2020 (computer vision AI company), WaveOptics in 2021 (the company designing its waveguide displays), Fit Analytics in 2022 (shopping and ecommerce), a 3D-scanning startup called Th3rd in 2023, and GrAI Matter Labs in 2024 (an edge AI chip company), alongside many more. Well, I think this is one of the reasons we're standalone. I don't want to see people wearing a wire coming out of the back of their head. It makes people look like U.S. Government officials, and that's not how I want to see the world. The form factor obviously matters, but it's also the fit and finish of these things that also matter when you make that jump. Like they need to be robust, but like all of those are pulling the product in different directions. So like, I think one of our strengths is, like, the balance of all of these things. You can make a giant field of view. Some companies have, but you also need really high pixel count or pixels per degree, because it's important for text legibility. You need the ability to make it work indoors and outdoors. Why? Because I don't want to spend all my time inside. As I'm moving through my day, like some of that's inside, some of it's outside. It needs to work in both. So you can't just have a static tint like sunglasses, nor can you just make them clear because they don't work in both environments. So because we've been building these things for so long, we learned these things. We've learned how to solve those problems — what works and what doesn't — but it's all in that trade-off and exactly how you balance all those things. Like, obviously, I'd want the battery to last for days, but then you end up with this giant battery pack that's directionally incorrect, too. This has been a multi-year multi-generation arc. We've launched a pair of 26-degree field of view, augmented reality glasses in 2021 to developers. With that, we learned a ton, and it drove the way our development tool Lens Studio is constructed. So we've been just iterating and iterating and iterating. And what we learned is that like the breath of feedback, the depth of feedback, it's not like you release the product once — you get a long written document, and that's it. It's an active conversation with the community. We even iterate in public in collaboration with our Spectacles subreddit. We want to learn. And what we find is like, as the community grows, as people get better and better at building lenses, they start answering each other's questions. It's a back and forth, like, I personally know developers. That's what a successful community looks like, and we're building this together. And that's very, very intentional. It's in the way our pricing is structured. It's in the way our community is growing. We don't just sell it to anybody, because we want the people who are really going to move the platform forward. It's all very, very, very intentional, and we're very happy with the results as well. As we've had the product out a little bit longer, the lenses have been getting more and more engaging and we're learning together how different UI elements are. I think we are really here to build this with the community because it's an entirely new paradigm. There's a lot of things that will take time for people to understand and figure out. It's not just going to be like, 'oh, here you go, developers — come build for this!' That's not going to work, in my opinion. It is very, very much a community-led discussion. And I couldn't be happier with that. I think what Evan shared was more than Ray-Ban Metas, and less than a Apple Vision Pro. I recognize that's a huge scale!. Obviously we want to make it as low cost as possible. Yeah. But it's also pretty, as you pointed out, pretty advanced technology. And so there's a balance there. One of the things that may not be super intuitive is there's a lot of technology that there is not a ton of world capacity for. Like, we have to go off and work with our suppliers to create these new technologies. Then we have to build the capacity to actually produce them. It's a fun challenge, but there's certainly a ton of work to do. Like, this isn't a Snap-specific problem. This is industry-wide. This is an area where Snap is in a very good spot. Trust matters, privacy matters. And the way we're constructing all of this is a privacy centric way. Like, I want to personalize it. But, this is the most personal possible device. It is literally seeing exactly what I'm seeing. And so, of course, we're going to bring in all the personalization that AI kind of already has like memory. That's an element here, but like I'm actually more worried about how we do it in a privacy-centric way. Back to your previous question, I'm very happy with our direction there. And we've shared a little bit about it, but like having built these for a while, having lived with them, like, it's very much one thing to say, like, hey, but what is this use case? Which I personally don't think is that valuable. It's more about that responsiveness — when I want it, I can go as deep as I want on any topic with it. But do so in a way that maintains my privacy for the times when I don't really need it. But I think that's maybe an undervalued, underexpected problem. Like, you don't want to just share camera images of your entire day! I like that you said battery life, and not just battery capacity. Like, it's all about the way you use it smartly. I used to work on smartphones for a very long time. And yeah, the battery capacity has grown pretty consistently, to be honest — X percent per year. But really, software has gotten much better in how it's being used. This is one of the reasons we built Snap OS, so that we have complete control of exactly how every little bit of energy is consumed across the entire device. It also goes to the way we design the displays, how we make them just super duper efficient, how we do the processing and how we distribute the heat. All of these things have to be balanced, and that's why it's so important to build these, again, where engineers can talk to engineers, and really look at everything as precisely as I can. The other thing I would say is I think if you were to have like in the limit, you have full display, including everything in your world all the time. That would probably be visually overwhelming. I don't personally want a world where I'm walking around and everything's an ad all the time. That would be terrible. So like, I think it'll be about like, what is shown and when, how it's used, and then just generally technology progressing. You know, if you look at some of the initial talk times of very early phones, we're not that long in our developer models. But I think we have some good strategies to increase the battery life now, and it'll just get better and better over time.

Yahoo

13-06-2025

• Yahoo

AUGMENTED WORLD EXPO REVEALS 2025 AUGGIE AWARD WINNERS, BEST IN SHOW AND XR LEGENDS

AWE Celebrates Innovation and Legacy in an Unforgettable Milestone for the XR Industry LONG BEACH, Calif., June 12, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Augmented World Expo USA 2025 is a wrap! The world's largest event for XR and spatial computing concluded today with the announcement of BEST IN SHOW winners: Best in Show – Snap Inc. Best in Show Playground – Anywhere Bungee VR Best in Show Gaming Hub – TRIP THE LIGHT by Dark Arts Software The winners for the Virtual World Society Nextant Prizes, presented by Tom Furness and Alvin Graylin, are: Rising Star Prize – Danny Pimentel Legacy Prize – Jaron Lanier The XR industry is also celebrating a new lineup of champions. The Auggie Awards have been the most recognized XR and spatial computing industry awards in the world since 2010. Now in their 16th year, the Auggies continue to showcase the best of the best. 20 of the world's most innovative and game-changing developers, brands and creators were recognized with Auggie Awards. See the full list below. In addition,10 pioneers of XR were celebrated by the 2025 XR Hall of Fame, recognizing their lasting contributions to the field. The full list of inductees can be viewed here. AWE USA 2025 was packed with exciting news from exhibitors including Snap, Qualcomm, Niantic Spatial, XREAL, Lenovo and more. See highlights of announcements from the show — here. The Auggie Award winners are….. Best Art or Film – Non-Player Character Musical by Brendan Bradley: The first live, interactive VR musical, debuting with 24 shows at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Video here. Best Campaign – OREO X PAC-MAN SUPERMARCADE by ARKx | Form & Fun |Saatchi & Saatchi Germany: AR shopping experience turning supermarket aisles into a Pac-Man maze, combining digital fun with physical retail via WebAR. Video here. Best Climate Change Solution – Burn Zone: Immersive Truths from California's Wildfires by Lucid Reality Labs: VR experience immersing viewers in the Los Angeles wildfires, fostering empathy and action through an exploration of environmental devastation and climate adaptation. Video here. Best Collaboration Tool – Campfire: A platform for sharing 3D models in life-size spatial environments, enabling real-time collaboration for faster feedback, fewer errors, and quicker product delivery. Video here. Best Consumer App – Pencil! by 4th Wall Breakers: AR-powered drawing app that blends real paper and pencils with mixed-reality lessons, making learning drawing skills fun and easy for all levels. Video here. Best Content Creator(s) – Dilmer Valecillos XR YouTube Channel by Learn XR LLC: Resource for XR developers, offering tutorials and deep dives into AR/VR tools, simplifying complex tech into practical content that empowers a global community and highlights the latest innovations. Video here. Best Creator & Authoring Tool – Niantic Studio: 8th Wall's web-based visual editor lets anyone build and deploy immersive AR/XR experiences with real-time editing, drag-and-drop tools, and advanced features—no coding or app needed. Video here. Best Developer Tool – Lens Studio by Snap Inc: Free AR authoring platform used by 375,000+ creators to design and deploy custom AR experiences across Snapchat, websites, apps, and Spectacles, featuring tools like Ray Tracing, Snap ML, and Lens Cloud. Video here. Best Education & Training Solution – XR Guru Healthcare Pathways Training by XR Guru: AI-powered VR training platform offering immersive, language-supported healthcare courses for CNA, LPN, and nursing licensure, featuring critical thinking exercises and patient simulations. Video here. Best Enterprise Solution – Cactus by Auki Labs - Spatial AI for Retail by Auki Labs: A spatial AI solution that optimizes shelf space, workforce management, and operations, providing real-time insights and integrating with robots and AI to revolutionize retail. Video here. Best Game or Toy – Spatial Ops by Resolution Games: A groundbreaking multiplayer shooter that turns real-world spaces into dynamic battlefields, blending physical and digital realities with customizable arenas and immersive game modes like Free-for-All and Capture the Flag. Video here. Best Headworn Device – XREAL One Series by XREAL: Pioneering cinematic AR glasses with next-gen 3DoF spatial computing, Bose sound, and an optional 6DoF camera, setting a new standard in AR with exceptional visual and audio performance. Video here. Best Healthcare & Wellness Solution – Fundamental Surgery by FundamentalVR: Multimodal spatial computing platform transforming vision care and surgical training with immersive simulations and real-time multi-user capabilities to train clinicians in sight-restoring procedures, improving global healthcare outcomes. Video here. Best Indie Creator(s) – Ferryman Collective: VR theatre company redefining live performance with award-winning productions like The Severance Theory and Gumball Dreams, earning accolades at festivals like Tribeca, SXSW, and Venice. Video here. Best Interaction Product – Omni One by Virtuix Inc: Immersive entertainment system combining a specialized treadmill, standalone VR headset, and game store access, with wireless SteamVR connection for an expanded gaming experience. Video here. Best Location-Based Entertainment – AR in Google Maps for Paris Olympics by Rock Paper Reality & Google: AR experience embedding 3D models of Paris landmarks into Google Maps, offering immersive, geospatial explorations via Google Lens and Street View, revolutionizing location-based AR. Video here. Best Societal Impact – Sign Language Translator by Frame Sixty, LLC: Real-time sign language translation app for Apple Vision Pro that instantly converts sign language into speech and text, enabling seamless communication between Deaf and hearing individuals. Video here. Best Use of AI – Medical AI Agent by Lucid Reality Labs: AI-driven training solution featuring a digital twin of Dr. Patrick Schoettker, offering real-time expert feedback and immersive XR simulations to enhance healthcare education and reduce errors. Video here. Best Web3 Implementation – The Posemesh by Auki Labs by Auki Labs: A decentralized machine perception network using Auki Network and Posemesh to enable privacy-preserving spatial computing, powering collaborative mapping for XR and here. Start Up to Watch – Verse Immersive by Enklu MEDIA CONTACT: alyssa@ View original content: SOURCE AWE (Augmented World Expo)