In April, Patently Apple posted a report titled “One of Tim Cook’s focuses is to beat Meta’s Orion AR Glasses to market.” Yet Meta isn’t the only competitor in this field in North America. The maker of Snapchat said today that its next-generation glasses will be called Specs, breaking with the company’s Spectacles branding that it used for previous versions of its wearable devices. The Specs will use AR technology to let people see and interact with digital imagery that’s overlaid over the physical world.

Snap went on to state that the time is right for a revolution in computing that naturally integrates our digital experience with the physical world. That’s why we’ve spent 11 years and more than $3 billion to invent a new type of computer for augmented reality, designed to enhance the physical world with digital experiences. Snap calls them Specs, an ultra-powerful wearable computer integrated into a lightweight pair of glasses with see-thru lenses, and they’re coming next year.

Specs understand the world around you with advanced machine learning, bring AI assistance into three dimensional space, enable shared games and experiences with friends, and provide a flexible and powerful workstation for browsing, streaming, and more.

Snap always built their products and services in an attempt to make technology feel more human. When they first started Snapchat, people still believed that the digital world was separate from the “real” world. Digital services rarely reflected human nature. Social media was a popularity contest, conversations were recorded forever, and apps opened into endless feeds of content.

Snapchat changed all of that. They introduced ephemeral messaging so conversations felt more like talking face to face. They built vertical video so people could hold their phones comfortably while watching full screen. They designed Stories to put content in chronological order, the way stories have always been told, rather than a reverse chronological feed. And they designed Snapchat to open into the camera, to inspire creativity and self-expression.

But they’ve always longed for something different. The tiny smartphone limited our imagination. It forced us to look down at a screen, instead of up at the world. It required our fingers to hold, swipe, and tap when we really wanted to live hands-free. It kept content confined to a small 2D rectangle, when we really wanted to experience life in all of its three-dimensional splendor.

And now at a time when computers are learning to think and act like humans with artificial intelligence, it’s clear that today’s devices and user interfaces are woefully inadequate to realize the full potential of AI. Chatbots will soon give way to immersive experiences that bring AI into the world through augmented reality, empowering us to express ourselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together.

The consumer-focused Specs will run on the company’s Snap OS operating systems. Snap said that developers will be able to incorporate Google’s Gemini AI models into programs they develop for the smart glasses, giving coders more AI options to choose from as they write software for the device. Previously, developers could only use OpenAI’s GPT family of AI models to build AR apps for the smart glasses.

“We couldn’t be more excited about the extraordinary progress in artificial intelligence and augmented reality that is enabling new, human-centered computing experiences,” Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said in a statement.

While it’s widely rumored that Apple’s first AI glasses may launch in late 2026, AR glasses, on the other hand, may not surface until 2027 or beyond. Apple’s new Liquid Glass version of iOS, that due in September, may provide us with a peek at what to expect for their smartglasses.