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Harvard Dropouts To Launch 'Always On' AI Smart Glasses That Listen, Record Every Conversation 68

Posted by BeauHD from the always-listening dept.
Two Harvard dropouts are launching Halo X, a $249 pair of AI-powered smart glasses that continuously listen, record, and transcribe conversations while displaying real-time information to the wearer. "Our goal is to make glasses that make you super intelligent the moment you put them on," said AnhPhu Nguyen, co-founder of Halo. Co-founder Caine Ardayfio said the glasses "give you infinite memory."

"The AI listens to every conversation you have and uses that knowledge to tell you what to say ... kinda like IRL Cluely," Ardayfio told TechCrunch. "If somebody says a complex word or asks you a question, like, 'What's 37 to the third power?' or something like that, then it'll pop up on the glasses." From the report: Ardayfio and Nguyen have raised $1 million to develop the glasses, led by Pillar VC, with support from Soma Capital, Village Global, and Morningside Venture. The glasses will be priced at $249 and will be available for preorder starting Wednesday. Ardayfio called the glasses "the first real step towards vibe thinking."

The two Ivy League dropouts, who have since moved into their own version of the Hacker Hostel in the San Francisco Bay Area, recently caused a stir after developing a facial-recognition app for Meta's smart Ray-Ban glasses to prove that the tech could be used to dox people. As a potential early competitor to Meta's smart glasses, Ardayfio said Meta, given its history of security and privacy scandals, had to rein in its product in ways that Halo can ultimately capitalize on. [...]

For now, Halo X glasses only have a display and a microphone, but no camera, although the two are exploring the possibility of adding it to a future model. Users still need to have their smartphones handy to help power the glasses and get "real time info prompts and answers to questions," per Nguyen. The glasses, which are manufactured by another company that the startup didn't name, are tethered to an accompanying app on the owner's phone, where the glasses essentially outsource the computing since they don't have enough power to do it on the device itself. Under the hood, the smart glasses use Google's Gemini and Perplexity as its chatbot engine, according to the two co-founders. Gemini is better for math and reasoning, whereas they use Perplexity to scrape the internet, they said.
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Harvard Dropouts To Launch 'Always On' AI Smart Glasses That Listen, Record Every Conversation More

Harvard Dropouts To Launch 'Always On' AI Smart Glasses That Listen, Record Every Conversation

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  • Glassholes? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @06:44PM (#65603690)

    Did we learn nothing from the glasshole incident?

    • Harvard Dropouts? (Score:5, Funny)

      by sound+vision ( 884283 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @06:56PM (#65603728) Journal

      I unfortunately only ever had the opportunity to drop out of community college, perhaps if I could have dropped out of Harvard instead...

      • This may be a joke but its absolutely correct - 90% of the value of Harvard and most ivy league institutions is in the exclusivity of admission (resume signals), and networking contacts.

        Split the value of that however you like but if you drop out after sophomore year to launch a failed startup you're probably getting the most value and ahead of your peers in both costs and long term career opportunity.

        I suspect this is a big reason ivy league will be naturally reluctant to drop legacy admissions - its not j

      • Weirdly, being a Harvard dropout is seen as more prestigious in tech circles than actually graduating!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by kthulhu ( 24986 )

      Or Recording laws.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        In the United States, California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Washington are considered two-party (or all-party) consent states for recording conversations. This means that in these states, all parties involved in a conversation must consent to being recorded.

    • For example, everyone records everything all the time and uploads it to social media if it will be viral. In other words, these idiots are late to the game.

      Should have stayed in school, kids.

    • We did. They didn't.

    • They were about a decade early, it would seem.

    • Sure, we learned to set the barrier very low ($285), market the product to the "non super-intelligent", and then take the money and run. Google fucked up by actually putting their glasses into production.

    • No, we already knew that we need to preemptively punch dropouts from Harvard [wikipedia.org] in the face.

  • Different definition of intelligent (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PuddleBoy ( 544111 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @06:47PM (#65603704)

    "Our goal is to make glasses that make you super intelligent the moment you put them on"

    I'm thinking my definition of intelligent and yours are different...

    • Re:Different definition of intelligent (Score:4, Insightful)

      by msauve ( 701917 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @07:10PM (#65603752)
      Yep. There's a slight chance they could make someone seem more intelligent, but more likely they'll look as stupid as a hallucinating AI. And they won't know the difference. It's got absolutely nothing to do with the wearer's intelligence (although that someone is willing to pay for these is an indicator).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      I guess this is just another attempt to make terminally dumb "AI" look smart: The "Big Lie" approach (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie).

      Obviously, current "AI" is not intelligent in the usual sense. Hence it is not "super intelligent" either. People that mistake knowledge for intelligence (the majority) might be fooled though.

    • "Our goal is to make glasses that make you super intelligent the moment you put them on"

      I'm thinking my definition of intelligent and yours are different...

      The question we have to ask ourselves, and these guys apparently didn't bother to ask themselves: What's the cut-off between people that need these glasses to appear more intelligent, and people willing to read to seem more intelligent? Because they'll have to read the facts on the glasses to seem more intelligent, and if you like to read already, you probably don't need the damned glasses to have knowledge at your fingertips.

      Aside from that, people are starting to wake up to the constant surveillance they'

  • What is Bill Gates up to know?

  • "Smart Glasses Founders & Harvard Dropouts Sued for Being Privacy Rapists"

  • and do they sell the data to marketing partners?
    or is it local only?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Xenx ( 2211586 )
      With any company, you'll have to take them at their word, but they claim they don't share, sell, or train on your conversations. It looks like it isn't local, with them stating they use end-to-end encryption and cannot even see your data.

  • Can we start? (Score:5, Funny)

    by registrations_suck ( 1075251 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @07:07PM (#65603746)

    Can we start being the shit out of these assholes NOW, or do we need to wait for a product release?

  • "Our goal is to make glasses that make you super intelligent the moment you put them on"

    Gag me now! I decided to not wait for Bottageddon to finish me off.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      If you price it high enough, the customers you have left are obligated to feel super intelligent.

  • Really difficult for me to rationalize why else you would want to make yourself the puppet of an AI.

  • Harvard Smarvard (Score:4, Insightful)

    by divide overflow ( 599608 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @07:53PM (#65603818)

    Harvard Dropouts To Launch 'Always On' AI Smart Glasses That Listen, Record Every Conversation

    More proof that dropping out of Harvard doesn't guarantee business success.

  • ... make you super intelligent ...

    So they'll turn black the moment one looks at Fox News, NewsMax, ONN, a GOP White House employee, or a GOP cabinet member? That will make the wearer "super intelligent", at least, compared to a MAGA not wearing these classes.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Not really, access to information does not give you the skills and insights needed to use that information. Hence all this could create is know-it-all moron assholes.

  • I'm wondering if I could prompt someone's glasses to draw ASCII penises on their screen.

    I don't want to sound like a Luddite but the older I become, the less excited I get about tech. I feel it's moved beyond beneficial to humanity and now just about vanity. I still see some pretty cool devices but nothing that makes me think "I HAVE to get that."

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by taustin ( 171655 )

      I'm more inclined to wear a harness of infrared laser LEDs, which screw up most camera sensors, at least temporarily.

      I wonder if there's some kind of ultrasonic/subsonic equivalent for microphones.

    • I stopped being excited about tech a long time ago, and I'm embarrassed and ashamed of all the money I have completely pissed away on technology.

      I got my first smart phone in 2012 (as did my wife). While it has undoubtedly improved our lives in many ways, I think, overall, they have been a net negative.

      In car navigation systems...ok, this is a really good use of technology and I'm glad to have it. I include in this the ability to identify a store of interest, find out if they are open, etc.

      Other than that..

    • Same. I used to be salivating over the tech news sites.

      Realistically, in this day and age it is very difficult to come up with some really cool tech. Cool as in attention grabber. The landscape has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. People are already at the limit of how much tech they can have in their life. they are not looking for more

    • I'm wondering if I could prompt someone's glasses to draw ASCII penises on their screen. I don't want to sound like a Luddite but the older I become, the less excited I get about tech. I feel it's moved beyond beneficial to humanity and now just about vanity. I still see some pretty cool devices but nothing that makes me think "I HAVE to get that."

      Tech thirty years ago: "Cool. Wonder when I'll get a chance to play with that."

      Tech today: "What the fuck? More surveillance and tools of oppression?"

  • "Halo X, a $249 pair of AI-powered smart glasses ... users still need to have their smartphones handy to help power the glasses and get "real time info prompts and answers to questions," ..."

    So is smartphone-powered and AI-powered the same thing? Sounds like these two Harvard dropouts were marketing majors.

    • Yeah, so:

      For now, Halo X glasses only have a display and a microphone ... Users still need to have their smartphones handy to help power the glasses and get "real time info prompts and answers to questions," per Nguyen. The glasses, which are manufactured by another company that the startup didn't name, are tethered to an accompanying app on the owner's phone, where the glasses essentially outsource the computing since they don't have enough power to do it on the device itself.

      So what these things do is, they listen to a conversation, process questions as voice commands, pass those down to the smartphone, the phone passes the question to ChatGPT or whatever LLM they use, then passes the ChatGPT answer to the glasses and they show it on the 'display' as semi-transparent text on the actual glasses I'm guessing, at least that's my understanding of it, unless I'm missing something.

      First, smartphones already do all of this, including listening to all your conversations. The o

  • I might buy them (Score:3)

    by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @09:02PM (#65603932)
    I would buy them purely as an assistive technology for my hearing loss. I would love to see a live transcript of what is being said. Google's Live Transcribe works well but having to look down at your phone is unnatural and prevents eye contact.

    I have no interest in recording anything or in being AI enhanced.

    • That seems like a great use case to me, and an admirable one. If only there were some profit from it, or some benefit for the ultra Rich??
  • They are doing this because there is a market. As PT Barnum said, you can fool some of the people all the time.
  • The largest token limits in common use are a million. Put just an hour of conversation in context with relevant data and you'll hit that limit. And that doesn't' even count the problem of forgetting within the limit.

  • Is this the new idiot trend like eWhatever and iWhatever were in the early 2000's? Everything is going to be "vibe" this and "vibe" that?

    • First Zuckerberg wanted people to have AI friends, now these asshats want people to disconnect their brain and outsource their actual thinking process to AI. I can't even remember any Sci-Fi that imagines that kind of dystopia. The sad thing is, some people will be tempted.

  • Tech incubators - not even once.

  • Just because you can do a thing, does not mean that you should do a thing. This shit is the glasshole all over again [penny-arcade.com]. I hope and believe that people will come to view the current use of "smart" tech much like smoking. Dumb to do and nobody accept it second hand.
  • And is info shared ?

  • In Germany even illegal to possess and in the the rest it can land you in prison if you use them.

  • I wonder if this uses a built in AI processor and storage, or relies on some cloud based tech for that? Because if its the latter and it does the usual "Internet of shit" thing of going first to subscriptions and then folding, you're going get some newly intelligent people suddenly looking very, very stupid again.

  • So I guess these are illegal in 12 states. (Score:3)

    by Holi ( 250190 ) on Thursday August 21, 2025 @12:46PM (#65605318)

    Cannot be worn or sold in California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Washington as they violate 2 party consent laws.

  • why (Score:1)

    by w3rrd ( 10503116 )
    Are people trying to destroy our way of life? This is ridiculously stupid and cannot offer any benefit that offsets the gross security and privacy overstep this is. Life peaked in 2004 folks.

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