Meta slaps a premium subscription on an existing smart glasses feature [U]

Meta will charge glasses users $20/month for a new Meta One Premium subscription, and one of the first features to get locked down is “Conversation Focus.”

Meta One Premium is a new plan announced by the company in May. It’s part of a wider subscription rollout that places the offer of better features for your socials and products right in front of you. In reality, it seems to make the platforms and products that were once free a little more inaccessible.

Update 7/2: Meta has reached out to confirm that its AI glasses do not require a subscription to use, especially regarding core AI features being free out of the box. In regard to Conversation Focus, this is what Meta says:

It also clarified the reasoning behind its inclusion in Meta One:

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The Meta One Premium plan officially affects those who wear Meta’s smart glasses – display or not. An updated help article from Meta’s website details the premium tiers feature list, and it now states that Conversation Focus is extended for subscribers (via The Verge).

Without the plan, that feature is limited to just 3 hours of usage a month. If you pay the $20/month premium subscription fee, you still won’t be allowed to use Meta’s glasses feature without limits. The communication aid will only work for 15 hours and reset the next month, much like modern AI plans.

Conversation Focus doesn’t seem to run server-side, according to findings from The Verge. It takes audio from people in your area and amplifies their voice, making them a little clearer in certain environments. But it does all of that using hardware located on the glasses, not through a cloud connection. Meta details its beam-forming mics and advanced processing used with onboard hardware.

Since the feature runs fully on-device, it makes no sense for Meta to impose usage limits on the feature and lock extended runtime behind a premium Meta AI subscription. At that point, it’s part of the purchased device and not something that would warrant upkeep costs.

This comes as the company was recently discovered shipping facial recognition capabilities in its glasses while noting it did not have plans to implement that function.