Amazon may be entering the smart glasses game with a pair of tech spectacles sporting the company’s Alexa virtual assistant.
To further the spread of Alexa beyond the Echo smart speaker, the Financial Times reported that Amazon is looking to create a pair of glasses that wirelessly tether to a person’s smartphone and allows them to bark commands at Alexa and hear responses from the virtual assistant via the use of a bone-conduction audio system, the type of tech found in high-end audio equipment and the communications technology used by covert military specialists like the UK’s SAS.
Unlike the Google Glass smart glasses, which saw little success as a consumer tech product, the Alexa-equipped specs will reportedly not have a built-in display and will effectively look like a normal pair of glasses as opposed to semi sci-fi Google Glass, which resembled something of a lovechild between haute couture fashion and industrial tech aesthetics.
If the FT‘s sources are to be believed, there’s a chance we could see a pair of Alexa smart glasses make their debut towards the end of the year, alongside other updates to Amazon’s virtual assistant.
Entering the smart glasses fray is a difficult move for any tech company, as unlike other wearables, smart glasses haven’t really captured widespread attention. Snap’s Spectacles, which allow wearers to capture short videos from their first-person perspective for uploading onto Snapchat, have found some uptake but are far from taking the wearable tech world by storm.
And Amazon could simply be experimenting with smart glasses for the time being, potentially with no ambitions to release a product at the end of the year, particularly when it’s reportedly working on a host of other Alexa-orientated home tech.
Related: 13 essential skills for your Amazon Echo speaker
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
