Years from now, I’ll look back at 2025 as the year when a fundamental shift happened in wearable technology. Over the last decade, the category has been synonymous with health and fitness. In many ways, that association is still the primary one. But this year, I’ve seen an increasing number of tech companies pitch another trajectory for wearables: as vehicles for AI.
The clearest example is what used to be known as smart glasses. During CES last January, it became clear that the unexpected success of Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses was catching on. At the show, the floor was rife with both audio-only and display glasses that promised a future of hands-free and immersive computing. But companies were also starting to correct me on my terminology. “Could you actually stop calling them smart glasses?” they’d ask in person and over email. “We think of them as AI glasses.”
I’d first heard this term from Meta. I thought it was simply a marketing thing. After all, smart glasses are smart glasses — a tech gadget in the mainstream consciousness due in large part to Google Glass’s public downfall a decade ago. But no. Peep at any of Meta’s glasses marketing, and you’ll see them called AI glasses. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated that he believes glasses to be the ideal form factor for AI. Not only is it like having a discreet pair of speakers on your face, you can also take pictures and ask AI questions about the world around you.
Rebranding smart glasses as AI glasses isn’t exclusive to Meta. When I recently demoed the latest Android XR features, Google told me that they also differentiate between AI glasses, XR headsets, and a third in-between category. According to Google, AI glasses are lightweight and stylish, and interacting with Gemini is the main draw. Something like Project Aura, while glasses-shaped, is more of a headset. But however you want to debate the semantics, the clear narrative throughline is that AI is the killer app that will crack this category open.
Outside of glasses, another type of wearable is beginning to pop up: always-listening pendants and pins. There is Bee AI, which was recently bought by Amazon, and Friend, an AI necklace with a controversial New York City subway ad campaign. There’s the Plaud NotePin and Limitless, and several startups in my inbox pitching similar gadgets. Hell, there’s even an AI smart ring that you can whisper voice memos into. The general idea here is a device that tags along with you all day, and uses AI to summarize your meetings, voice notes, and conversations. Some give to-do lists based on your day. Friend markets itself as more of an always-there companion that periodically messages you about things that happen around you.
What I keep coming back to is a conversation I had in August with Sandeep Waraich, Google’s product lead for Pixel Wearables. He described wearables as the “only one device in our computing lives that is guaranteed on-body presence.” Meaning: you can put your phone (and the AI assistant embedded in it) away. For AI assistants to work best, they’ve got to know an awful lot about you — which means they have to be with you all the time. What better way for AI to be with you 24/7 than inside a gadget that’s meant to live on you?
It’s unsettling for me to witness, but “wearables” are becoming increasingly synonymous with “AI.” And so long as tech companies view wearables as an ideal vehicle for AI, I don’t see this trend going away any time soon.
