what it is

The company is reportedly calling the upcoming device “Camerabuds,” a portmanteau of the words “camera” and “headphones.”

There are two words for headset in the English language that are used for different types of headphones. Full-size headphones worn on the head are called “headphones”, while small ear tips or earplugs that fit in the ears are called “earbuds”. Thus, the device claimed by Meta took part of its name from the word “headphone”, implying that small in-ear or vacuum headphones were waiting for us.

The feature of these headphones will be: Presence of two external facing camerasIt will be able to recognize the user’s environment and enable artificial intelligence functions to work in real time. This is similar to what the company is doing with multimodal AI features in its smart glasses.

As he reported, Mark Zuckerberg has “seen several possible designs for the device” but isn’t “satisfied” with any of them yet. There are also engineering issues within the company, such as battery life and heating issues, as well as many privacy issues arising from installing camera devices. People with long hair may also face problems as their hairstyles will block the view of the cameras.

Meta and devices

It remains to be seen whether such a project will actually move forward. Meta has a bit of a checkered history when it comes to hardware projects rather than software. In 2022, it closed its smart speaker series called Portal and canceled the long-awaited smart watch with camera.

Glasses created together with Ray-Ban also did not gain much popularity. The first generation was generally called a complete failure, but the company still decided to try a second time and release another version; the success of this is now only said that the latest version is selling better than the previous one.

Deploying Meta AI into hardware is also in line with the company’s goals to compete with other leading AI firms. While AI hardware like the Rabbit R1 and Humane AI Pin aren’t yet in demand, Meta hopes that putting the latest AI features into devices people are already used to wearing, like headphones, will make it an easier sell.