HTC Made Smart Glasses That Are Way More Private

You can’t really talk about smart glasses without bringing up Meta. HTC, the company behind 2010-era virtual reality headsets and a failed smartphone business, seems quite eager to tackle that comparison directly. In September, HTC started selling its $499 Vive Eagle smart glasses in the US. The Eagles have lots of the same features as other glasses on the market—cameras for capturing photos and video, speakers in the frames for music playback and calls, an embedded AI agent you can ask questions of and even get recipes from by taking pictures of stuff in your fridge.

谈到智能眼镜，就绕不开 Meta。HTC 这家曾推出 2010 年代虚拟现实头显并经历过手机业务失败的公司，似乎非常渴望直接面对这种比较。今年 9 月，HTC 开始在美国销售售价 499 美元的 Vive Eagle 智能眼镜。Eagle 具备市场上其他眼镜的许多相同功能——用于拍摄照片和视频的摄像头、用于音乐播放和通话的镜框扬声器，以及一个内置的 AI 助手，你可以通过拍摄冰箱里的东西向它提问，甚至获取食谱。

But HTC also wants to steer clear of the ongoing debate about privacy in camera-equipped smart glasses. Meta has been dogged by controversy for its smart glasses, with people worried about the company’s interest in enabling face-recognition features, and calling the people who wear them creepy. HTC is aware of that discourse and thinks it is completely possible to make smart glasses that aren’t a privacy nightmare. “It’s not just about protecting the consumer, but it’s also about protecting people around the consumer,” Dan McDowell, HTC Vive’s head of enterprise sales, tells WIRED. “People can usher in, I think, what are really tremendous experiences with a new layer of confidence and protection.”

但 HTC 也希望避开关于带摄像头智能眼镜隐私问题的持续争论。Meta 的智能眼镜一直饱受争议，人们担心该公司有兴趣启用人脸识别功能，并称佩戴这些眼镜的人令人毛骨悚然。HTC 注意到了这种舆论，并认为完全有可能制造出不会成为隐私噩梦的智能眼镜。HTC Vive 企业销售主管 Dan McDowell 对《连线》杂志表示：“这不仅是为了保护消费者，也是为了保护消费者周围的人。我认为，人们可以在一种新的信心和保护层下，迎来真正非凡的体验。”

I’ve been wandering around with the glasses for a couple of weeks, and so far they meet my expectations for what smart glasses have become. They protect my eyes from the sun. They snap good photos and videos. You can record and transcribe voice notes. The music playback has decent sound quality. (I’ll always prefer a solid pair of headphones if I’m actually trying to listen to music, but the speakers work just fine.) They come in two styles—one with square Wayfarer-esque lenses and the other more rounded.

我戴着这款眼镜四处走动了几周，到目前为止，它们符合我对智能眼镜现状的预期。它们能遮挡阳光，能拍出不错的照片和视频，还可以录制并转录语音笔记。音乐播放的音质尚可。（如果我真的想听音乐，我还是会选择一副好的耳机，但这些扬声器表现得也还行。）它们有两种款式——一种是方形的 Wayfarer 风格镜片，另一种则更圆润。

The Vive Eagle glasses can get 4.5 hours of battery life on continuous music playback. They can last 36 hours on standby. HTC also sells a companion clip-on battery pack called Power Boost that costs $49. It clips right onto the frame and is noticeable but not as obnoxious as you might think. Don’t forget the AI assistant, Vive AI, which can utilize OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. It doesn’t require a login, so users are “de-identified” in a way that keeps the services from retaining personal information. (That also means, by default, you won’t be able to enjoy many of the personalization features these chatbots offer by gleaning information from your emails and messages.) The glasses come with Vive’s AI Plus, free for the first two years. After that, users must pay a monthly $2.50 subscription fee.

Vive Eagle 眼镜在连续播放音乐时可获得 4.5 小时的电池续航，待机时间可达 36 小时。HTC 还销售一款名为 Power Boost 的配套夹式电池组，售价 49 美元。它直接夹在镜框上，虽然显眼，但并没有你想象中那么碍事。别忘了 AI 助手 Vive AI，它可以调用 OpenAI 的 ChatGPT 或 Google 的 Gemini。它不需要登录，因此用户处于“去标识化”状态，这使得服务方无法保留个人信息。（这也意味着，默认情况下，你将无法享受这些聊天机器人通过从你的电子邮件和信息中收集信息而提供的许多个性化功能。）这款眼镜附带 Vive 的 AI Plus 服务，前两年免费。此后，用户每月需支付 2.50 美元的订阅费。

Right by the cameras is a bright indicator light. If you cover the light, it won’t record. If someone around you says stop recording, that will stop the recording. Video footage you capture is encrypted and stored on the glasses—it’s not automatically sent to the phone or cloud. If you want to import photos or videos, you have to do it manually in the app. Meta has faced scrutiny over the indicator light before, as some users have blocked the LED with stickers or broken into the hardware to turn it off. Meta has responded with software updates that disable the camera if someone tampers with the indicator light, along with other privacy-focused measures.

摄像头旁边有一个明亮的指示灯。如果你遮住指示灯，它就不会录制。如果周围有人要求停止录制，录制也会停止。你拍摄的视频片段会被加密并存储在眼镜上，不会自动发送到手机或云端。如果你想导入照片或视频，必须在应用程序中手动操作。Meta 之前曾因指示灯问题受到审查，因为一些用户用贴纸遮挡 LED 灯或通过破解硬件将其关闭。Meta 随后通过软件更新做出回应，如果有人篡改指示灯，摄像头将被禁用，此外还采取了其他以隐私为重点的措施。

I ask McDowell how HTC, and really any smart glasses maker, can get past the “trust me, bro”–style privacy promises companies tend to make. “We’re not a social media company,” McDowell says. “There’s no benefit to me to have any of your info. We don’t train our AI model or any third-party AI models with any of the information that is used on the glasses.”

我问 McDowell，HTC 以及任何智能眼镜制造商，该如何摆脱公司倾向于做出的那种“兄弟，相信我”式的隐私承诺。McDowell 说：“我们不是一家社交媒体公司。获取你的任何信息对我来说没有任何好处。我们不会使用眼镜上使用的任何信息来训练我们的 AI 模型或任何第三方 AI 模型。”

The real problem may be that with cameras on the frames, smart glasses are hard to distinguish between brands. The Vive Eagles look a lot like Meta glasses, and people worried about those privacy issues may not know that the Eagles are different and not tied to Mark Zuckerberg’s company. I’ve had friends see me wearing them and ask if they’re smart glasses. Yeah, I replied, but not the ones they’re thinking of. That didn’t seem to dispel any of their suspicions.

真正的问题可能在于，由于镜框上装有摄像头，智能眼镜很难区分品牌。Vive Eagle 看起来很像 Meta 的眼镜，而担心隐私问题的人可能不知道 Eagle 与众不同，且与马克·扎克伯格的公司无关。有朋友看到我戴着它们，问这是不是智能眼镜。我回答说是，但不是他们想的那种。这似乎并没有消除他们的任何疑虑。

The hope, at least how HTC frames it, is that more players with better privacy practices will help shift cultural disdain for smart glasses. A bunch of other companies are going cameraless, like Even Realities, Viture, and Halliday. Others are building theirs with privacy shields or focusing on virtual displays instead of capturing the world around you. That said, no one has captured the market quite like Meta. “We’d like to make sure that our technology adapts to society’s expectations, not the other way around,” McDowell says. “I hope that everybody that’s making products like these takes steps in the right direction.”

至少在 HTC 的构想中，希望有更多拥有更好隐私实践的参与者，能帮助改变人们对智能眼镜的文化偏见。许多其他公司正在走无摄像头路线，例如 Even Realities、Viture 和 Halliday。另一些公司则在制造时加入了隐私保护罩，或者专注于虚拟显示，而不是捕捉周围的世界。话虽如此，还没有人能像 Meta 那样占领市场。McDowell 说：“我们希望确保我们的技术适应社会的期望，而不是反过来。我希望所有制造此类产品的人都能朝着正确的方向迈出步伐。”