Two former Harvard students, AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio, are launching a new pair of “always-on” AI-powered smart glasses called Halo X. Priced at $249, these glasses are designed to continuously listen to, record, and transcribe every conversation the wearer has. The transcribed information is then used to provide real-time prompts and answers to questions, effectively giving the user “infinite memory.”
The glasses don’t have a camera but use a microphone and a heads-up display. The AI processing is done via a companion smartphone app that uses a combination of Google’s Gemini and Perplexity to power its chatbot engine. The founders claim that the glasses are able to focus on the wearer and typically ignore background speech, though they are always listening.
The lack of an external indicator light to show that a conversation is being recorded has raised significant privacy concerns among advocates, who argue that this technology normalizes covert recording and erodes the expectation of privacy in public and private spaces. The founders have stated that it is the user’s responsibility to comply with local laws, such as those in states that require two-party consent for recording conversations.
