TheChek News Flow

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reviewed several designs, but has not been satisfied with any.

Meta Platforms is exploring developing artificial intelligence–powered earphones with cameras, which the company hopes could be used to identify objects and translate foreign languages, according to three current employees. Meta’s work on a new AI device comes as several tech companies look to develop AI wearables, and after Meta added an AI assistant to its Ray-Ban smart glasses.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has seen several possible designs for the device but has not been satisfied with them, one of the employees said. It’s unclear if the final design will be in-ear earbuds or over-the-ear headphones. Internally, the project goes by the name Camerabuds.

The timeline is also unclear. Company leaders had expected a design to be approved in the first quarter, one of the people said. But employees have identified multiple potential problems with the project, including that long hair may cover the cameras on the earbuds. Also, putting a camera and batteries into tiny devices could make the earbuds bulky and risk making them uncomfortably hot. Attaching discreet cameras to a wearable device may also raise privacy concerns, as Google learned with Google Glass.

Meta declined to comment.

Several other tech companies are working on AI wearables, as they seek new uses for AI that will prove as transformative as the smartphone. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently told an associate that he and LoveFrom—Jony Ive’s design firm—have explored building an earbud-with-camera device, the associate said. Apple is also exploring adding cameras and AI to its earbuds, according to Bloomberg. And several startups have released small AI devices in recent months, including Humane’s AI Pin and Rabbit’s R1 pocket device, though both received poor reviews. Altman and a spokesperson for LoveFrom did not respond to requests for comment.

Meta leaders including Zuckerberg and Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth want to develop AI-powered earphones because they believe Meta’s competitors will pursue similar devices, one of the current employees said.

Bear Clark of Kansas-based electronics company Ear Micro, which develops “smart” earphones, licenses intellectual property and provides design support and engineering to tech firms, said interest from technology companies in developing “hearables” had exploded in the past eight to 10 months. Clark said he had recently been contacted by two big tech companies looking to develop smart earphones, though he declined to name them. Asked whether he was working with Meta, he declined to comment, citing a nondisclosure agreement. But he said Meta was, like many other tech companies, “very interested in the space.”

To make camera-equipped earbuds, the cameras could be placed on the rounded outer part of the earbud, with the goal of capturing an ultrawide angle, Clark said. Footage from the two earbuds “can then be stitched back together,” he said, creating a “complete 360-degree image.”

For companies like Meta, adding cameras to earbuds would allow users to map their surroundings. Using AI, the device could tell a user what they were looking at and how far they were from their office, for example.

And yet, as with the rush of activity around augmented reality and virtual reality devices, it’s not clear whether consumer demand for AI wearables will meet the industry hype.

Crowded Field

In 2019, Meta explored developing earphones that could be used for simple commands—asking for the time or whether a recent Facebook post had received any comments, for example—and for requesting reminders, two former employees said. However, Meta abandoned the project because leaders concluded it would be hard to stand out in the already established earphone market, the two former employees said.

In 2022, Meta filed a patent application for an in-ear earbud that bypasses the ear canal and transmits sound directly to the eardrum; the patent was granted in October 2023. The device, a prototype of which had been demonstrated internally in 2021, was designed so that audio would sound as if it was in the same space as the wearer—for example, a person speaking in the same room—another former employee said.

After OpenAI’s ChatGPT exploded in popularity, leaders at Meta started asking employees what AI-first devices they could develop, a former employee said. Since then, Meta has accelerated its work bringing generative AI to more products and has invested billions of dollars into those efforts, albeit without a clear path to recouping that investment.

Meta has also invested heavily in audio and acoustics technology, including acquiring Audio Analytic, which makes sound-recognition software, in 2022, and Whisper, developer of an AI-enabled hearing-aid system, in 2023.

But Meta has struggled in the past to develop successful hardware products. The company previously abandoned plans to build a line of smartwatches, the first of which was going to include two cameras and allow users to unclip the face of the watch to take pictures. Meta also scaled back its plans to develop AR glasses and canceled its line of Portal smart-home devices.

Portal struggled in part because it arrived years after Amazon and Google had begun selling smart-home devices that proved popular with consumers. Meta risks encountering a similar dynamic with earphones, since competitors such as Apple and Google already manufacture earphones. Meta also doesn’t make cellphones—a natural item to pair with glasses and earphones—which puts it at a further disadvantage in the hardware arena.