I Wore Meta Ray-Bans in Montreal to Test Their AI Translation Skills. It Did Not Go Well

Imagine you’ve conscionable arrived successful different country, you don’t talk the language, and you stumble upon a operation zone. The aerial is heavy with dust. You’re tired. You inactive stink similar airplane. You effort to disregard the jackhammers to decipher what the signs say: Do you request to transverse the street, oregon locomotion up different block, oregon crook around?

I was successful exactly specified a concern this week, but I came prepared. I’d flown to Montreal to walk 2 days investigating the caller AI translation diagnostic connected Meta’s Ray-Ban astute sunglasses. Within 10 minutes of mounting retired connected my archetypal walk, I ran into a barrage of confusing orangish detour signs.

The AI translation diagnostic is meant to springiness wearers a quick, hands-free mode to recognize substance written successful overseas languages, truthful I couldn’t person devised a amended popular quiz connected however it works successful existent time.

As an excavator rumbled, I looked astatine a motion and started asking my sunglasses to archer maine what it said. Before I could finish, a harried Quebecois operation idiosyncratic started shouting astatine maine and pointing northwards, and I scurried crossed the street.

Right astatine the commencement of my AI adventure, I’d tally into the biggest regulation of this translation software—it doesn’t, astatine the moment, archer you what radical say. It tin lone parse the written word.

I already knew that the diagnostic was writing-only astatine the moment, truthful that was nary surprise. But soon, I’d tally into its different less-obvious constraints. Over the adjacent 48 hours, I tested the AI translation connected a assortment of thoroughfare signs, concern signs, advertisements, humanities plaques, spiritual literature, children’s books, tourism pamphlets, and menus—with wildly varied results.

Sometimes it was competent, similar erstwhile it told maine that the publication I picked up for my son, Trois Beaux Bébés, was astir 3 beauteous babies. (Correct.) It told maine repeatedly that ouvert meant “open,” which, to beryllium frank, I already knew, but I wanted to springiness it immoderate layups.

Other times, my robot translator was not up to the task. It told maine that the motion for the notorious big movie theatre Cinéma L’Amour translated to … “Cinéma L’Amour.” (F for effort—Google Translate astatine slightest changed it to “Cinema Love.”)

At restaurants, I struggled to get it to work maine each point connected a menu. For example, alternatively of telling maine each of the antithetic burger options astatine a brew pub, it simply told maine that determination were “burgers and sandwiches,” and refused to get much circumstantial contempt my wheedling.

When I went to an Italian spot the adjacent night, it likewise gave maine a wide summary of the offerings alternatively than breaking them down successful detail—I was told determination were “grilled nutrient skewers,” but not, for example, that determination were duck confit, lamb, and beef options, oregon however overmuch they cost.

All successful all, close now, the AI translation is much of a temperamental enactment instrumentality than a genuinely utile question instrumentality for overseas climes.

How It Works (or Doesn’t)

To usage the AI translation, a glasses-wearer needs to accidental the pursuing magic words: “Hey Meta, look astatine …” and past inquire it to construe what it’s looking at.