Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses now let you share images directly to your Instagram Story

Meta is updating its Ray-Ban smart glasses with new hands-free functionality, the company says announced on Wednesday. Most notably, users can now share an image from their smart glasses directly to their Instagram Story without having to pick up their phone.

After taking a photo with the smart glasses, you can say, “Hey Meta, share my latest photo on Instagram.” Or you can say, “Hey Meta, post a photo to Instagram” to take a new photo at that moment.

The launch of the new feature is reminiscent of the Snap Spectacles, which debuted in 2016 and allowed users to take photos and videos with their smart glasses and share them directly to their Snapchat Stories.

Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses also get hands-free integrations with Amazon Music and meditation app Calm.

Users can now stream music from Amazon Music without having to pick up their phone by saying “Hey Meta, play Amazon Music.” You can also control your audio playback with touch or voice controls while your phone remains in your pocket.

To access the new hands-free Calm integration, users can say “Hey Meta, play Daily Calm” to make mindfulness exercises and self-care content accessible directly through their smart glasses.

Additionally, Meta is expanding the number of styles available in 15 countries, including the US, Canada, Australia and parts of Europe. The expansion includes the Skyler style in glossy chalk gray with gradient cinnamon pink lenses; Skyler in gloss black with cerulean blue transition lenses; and Headliner Low Bridge Fit in gloss black with Polar G15 lenses. The glasses are available on both Metas And Ray Bans websites.

The launch of the new features comes a month after the smart glasses got an AI upgrade. Meta has rolled out multimodal AI to its smart glasses, allowing users to ask questions about what they see. For example, if you see a menu in French, the smart glasses can use the built-in camera and Meta AI to translate the text for you.

The idea behind the launch is for the smart glasses to act as a personal AI assistant outside of your smartphone, in a way similar to Humane’s AI Pin.