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Posts tagged "glimpse"

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Oppo’s new AI-powered AR smart glasses give us a glimpse of the next tech revolution
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  • Oppo has shown off its Air Glass 3 AR glasses at MWC 2024
  • They’re powered by its AndesGPT AI model and can answer questions
  • They’re just a prototype, but the tech might not be far from launching

While there’s a slight weirdness to the Meta Ray-Ban Smart Glasses – they are a wearable camera, after all – the onboard AI is pretty neat, even if some of its best features are still in beta. So it’s unsurprising that other companies are looking to launch their own AI-powered specs, with Oppo being the latest in unveiling its new Air Glass 3 at MWC 2024.

In a demo video, Oppo shows how the specs have seemingly revolutionized someone's working day. When they boot up, the Air Glass 3's 1,000-nit displays show the user a breakdown of their schedule, and while making a coffee ahead of a meeting they get a message saying that it's started early.

While in the meeting the specs pick up on a question that’s been asked, and Oppo's AndesGPT AI model (which runs on a connected smartphone) is able to provide some possible answers. Later it uses the design details that have been discussed to create an image of a possible prototype design which the wearer then brings to life.

After a good day’s work they can kick back to some of their favorite tunes that play through the glasses’ in-built speakers. All of this is crammed into a 50g design. 

Now, the big caveat here is the Air Glass 3 AR glasses are just a prototype. What’s more, neither of the previous Air Glass models were released outside of China – so there’s a higher than likely chance the Air Glass 3 won’t be either.

But what Oppo is showing off isn’t far from being mimicked by its rivals, and a lot of it is pretty much possible in tech that you can go out and buy today – including those Meta Ray-Ban Smart Glasses.

The future is now

The Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses already have an AI that can answer questions like a voice-controlled ChatGPT. 

They can also scan the environment around you using the camera to get context for questions – for example, “what meal can I make with these ingredients?” – via their 'Look and Ask' feature. These tools are currently in beta, but the tech is working and the AI features will hopefully be more widely available soon.

They can also alert you to texts and calls that you’re getting and play music, just like the Oppo Air Glass 3 concept.

Orange RayBan Meta Smart Glasses in front of a wall of colorful lenses including green, blue, yellow and pink

The Ray-Ban Meta glasses ooze style and have neat AI tools (Image credit: Meta)

Then there’s the likes of the Xreal Air 2. While their AR display is a little more distracting than the screen found on the Oppo Air Glass 3, they are a consumer product that isn’t mind-blowingly expensive to buy – just $ 399 / £399 for the base model.

If you combine these two glasses then you’re already very close to Oppo’s concept; you’d just need to clean up the design a little, and probably splash out a little more as I expect lenses with built-in displays won’t come cheap.

The only thing I can’t see happening soon is the AI creating a working prototype product design for you. It might be able to provide some inspiration for a designer to work off, but reliably creating a fully functional model seems more than a little beyond existing AI image generation tools' capabilities.

While the Oppo Air Glass 3 certainly look like a promising glimpse of the future, we'll have to see what they're actually capable of if and when they launch outside China.

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Did we just catch our first glimpse of Windows 12? If so, we won’t get the new OS until 2025
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We might have just caught our first glimpse of Windows 12, although we can’t be sure about that – but what we do know is that Microsoft is making a big change with test builds of Windows.

XenoPanther on X (formerly Twitter) noticed that the internal Canary versions of Windows 11 – those in the earliest testing channel, in other words – were just forked with a new build 27547 coming into play.

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The most recent Canary channel build is version 26040 as you may be aware if you follow these preview releases (which comes with a new Voice Clarity feature to improve video chats).

So, now we have builds in the 26XXX range and also the 27XXX range, prompting the obvious question: Is the latter Windows 12 in its first test phase? Let’s discuss that in more depth next.

Analysis: I’m giving her all she’s got, Captain!

As Zac Bowden, the well-known Microsoft leaker (of Windows Central fame) points out, the likelihood here is that the next release of Windows is the 26XXX branch, which is currently rumored (by Bowden) to be Windows 11 24H2 coming later this year.

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That means the 27XXX preview versions could be the next incarnation of Windows after that, the one arriving in 2025 (and these builds probably won’t go into testing with Windows Insiders for some time yet). Hence the (tentative) conclusion that this might be Windows 12, or an all-new Windows, whatever it may be called.

(Although we should further note that technically, Windows 11 24H2 will be all-new. Not the front-end mind, but the underlying foundations – it will be built on a new platform known as Germanium, which will offer considerable performance and security benefits deep under the hood).

At any rate, this pretty much underlines the idea that Windows 12 (or next-gen Windows, whatever the final name) is not coming this year, and will probably arrive next year. After all, Windows 10 gets ditched in 2025, so it makes some sense that a new OS comes in as one shuffles out the exit door (in October 2025 to be precise).

As we’ve discussed before, one of the dangers of bringing in Windows 12 this year is that the move would fragment the desktop user base into three camps, which is clumsy and a headache for organizing updates. So that scenario is neatly avoided if Windows 12 doesn’t turn up until 2025.

As a side note, Microsoft has codenames for its OS development semesters, and the next one should have been arsenic – but due to it being perceived as “scary and violent” Bowden tells us, the software giant has avoided it, and is instead using the codename Dilithium. Which is pretty cool for Star Trek fans (maybe Duranium will be next in line when another unsuitable real-world element pops up).

Via Neowin, Deskmodder

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Windows 11 Copilot leak gives us a glimpse of the AI assistant in action
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We know Windows 11 is set to get Microsoft’s Copilot built in, and we’ve just caught a glimpse of the AI assistant feature (well, actually, a couple of sightings, and we’ll come back to the other one later).

In case you missed it (unlikely, admittedly), Copilot is the Bing Chat-powered integrated AI that pops up in a side panel to help in Windows 11, and Windows Latest managed to get a peek at an early version (add your own seasoning, and plenty of it, as with any leak).

There’s a big caveat here, namely that the pre-release version of Copilot shown (in a very brief clip) isn’t fully functional by any means.

Still, it gives you a flavor of how the Windows 11 helper – an assistant with a much, much grander vision than Cortana – will perform, and what it can do.

Windows 11 Copilot Pre-release Version

(Image credit: Windows Latest)

We see the user instructing Copilot to turn on Dark Mode (which, ahem, it fails to do – as noted, this isn’t a proper working version), and a response to a food-based question (the queries work in much the same way as with the Bing chatbot already, and the three core personalities for replies are in here, too).

We don’t see much here, and nothing of the really cool tricks that Copilot will eventually be able to do (such as turning on multiple features in one fell swoop to help with a certain aim like ‘being more productive’, or summarizing content to go in an email, right there in the app, in-line).

However, Windows Latest does observe that Microsoft will use in-house plug-ins to customize the Bing Chat experience in Windows 11, and that Copilot will utilize a system of “action cards” to detect how you are using the OS, and offer up intelligent suggestions based on that.

Analysis: Where art thou, Copilot?

Okay, so while this glimpse of Microsoft’s AI is still very much early work, and not very exciting, it’s a useful hint that Copilot is ticking along progress-wise. Because we’ve not heard anything from Microsoft since the initial announcement of the AI, when we were told that it’d be in testing in June.

Now, June is almost over, and it seems unlikely that a preview build is going to show up later this week with a functional Copilot doing its query answering and settings manipulating stuff.

That said, we’ve caught not only this sighting of Copilot from Windows Latest, but there was another one at the weekend. That was provided by regular Twitter-based leaker Albacore, who pointed out that recent Windows 11 preview builds in the Dev channel have a Windows Copilot button (hidden – and when enabled, it doesn’t do anything, mind).

That’s another hint that things are coming into place for Copilot’s release to be tested in preview. However, we’ve got a feeling this will take a lot of internal testing before it gets to Windows Insiders, somehow. As the blurb in the Copilot side panel observes, it’s AI-powered, and “surprises and mistakes are possible”.

When it comes to a Bing chatbot query, a mistake is embarrassing enough, but with an AI embedded right into the heart of Windows 11, Microsoft is going to need to take a lot more care to avoid any potential blunders – even in testing.

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WhatsApp gives us a glimpse at Android-to-iOS chat migration
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WhatsApp is not only one of the most popular chat apps on the market, it is also one of the fastest evolving. It's long been known that WhatsApp's beta program has given us an enticing glimpse into the future, revealing some of what's to come, and this is once again the case with the latest preview of the iOS version of the chat app.

The most recent preview shows that WhatsApp is going to make life a little easier for anyone moving from an Android phone to an iPhone. We have already seen chat migration enabled for people making the switch away from iOS, but now the focus is on users moving in the opposite direction.

In WhatsApp beta for iOS version 22.2.74, we are given a sneak preview of what the chat migration to the iOS process will look like. We have already seen some evidence of this in the beta version of the Android app, but now we know a bit more about how things are panning on the iPhone side of things.

It seems that the migration process will not be handled entirely by the main WhatsApp app itself, but will instead require the use of a Move to iOS app as well. Screenshots from the latest iOS app beta give us a clear indication of the look and feel of the Importing Chat History process.

Permission, please

WhatsApp chat migration

(Image credit: WABetaInfo)

As you would expect, you need to grant permission for WhatsApp to access your chat history in order to start the migration process. Interestingly, and perhaps slightly worryingly, it seems that the offer to import chat history is a one-time offer. An on-screen message informs users that “You will not be able to import later if you skip this step”.

At this stage, we have no further information about when WhatsApp is planning to start the rollout of this feature to everyone. We also don't know anything about the versions of iOS and Android that will be supported, but more details are certain to spring up over the coming weeks and months.

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