Snap unveils personal AI assistant, new features coming to Specs: What you get with the AR glasses

The slew of upgrades coming to Snap’s soon-to-be-launched AR glasses is aimed at giving it a better place in wearers’ everyday lives

Snap on Wednesday, September 16, gave users a clearer glimpse of what to expect from its highly anticipated Specs augmented reality (AR) smart glasses, teasing new partnerships, features and services, including Specs Intelligence, ahead of a planned launch later this year.

The $2,195 wearable will ship sometime this fall with Specs Intelligence, a new AI assistant that can connect to other digital accounts to help wearers with work tasks, keep track of travel information, etc. Early adopters can get their hands on the Snapchat parent’s first-ever pair of AR glasses at a pop-up in Los Angeles, California, US, in October 2026.

Snap first debuted its long-awaited smart glasses earlier this year. But the reveal was underwhelming for several users who were surprised at the cost and disliked the big, bold, and black design of Specs. The glasses come in two lens sizes, 47mm and 52mm, and there is no mistaking these for a regular pair of glasses as they are bulkier than regularly designed smart glasses like the Meta-Ray Bans.

The slew of updates announced on Wednesday appears to be aimed at giving Specs a clearer purpose in customers’ everyday lives while making them feel more at ease about donning the glasses and justifying the price tag. At $2,195, it is an expensive piece of hardware but new AI features could potentially tip the scales.

Positioning Specs as a new way to engage with computing in a more human-centric format, Evan Spiegel, the CEO and co-founder of Snap, said, “I will say it’s an interesting time to be launching a new computer because things in tech are pretty weird right now.” “We’re being told that AI will take our jobs, that virtual worlds will replace the real one. Well, no, thank you. We do not accept that future. Making people irrelevant is not progress, and computers should make us more important, not less,” Spiegel added.

Here is an overview of everything Snap announced on Wednesday.

Similar to AI assistants like Meta’s Muse and Gemini’s Spark, Snap’s Specs Intelligence has been designed as an “anticipatory AI service” that “helps you manage what needs attention today, so you can make progress toward your longer-term goals.”

Users can chat with it and connect it to the apps and tools of their choosing in order to help Specs Intelligence better understand their goals, priorities, relationships, and routines. These connections also allow AI outputs to be grounded in a user’s personal context.

For example, users can prepare for an upcoming meeting by asking Specs Intelligence to generate questions to ask and things to remember. Prior to a trip, users can also rely on the AI assistant to make flight, hotel, and dinner plans while flagging a work deadline that falls during the visit.

It is available on iOS in preview starting today. Users can also apply for a waitlist for the “full early-access experience” of Specs Intelligence coming to Mac. When using Specs Intelligence on the AR glasses, the AI assistant can pull personal content and place it “directly into view” when relevant. It currently supports integrations with apps like Gmail and Slack based on a video from the event.

Under the hood, Specs Intelligence is powered by a proprietary combination of open-source models hosted in the US alongside local large language models (LLMs), as per the company.

In terms of user privacy, Snap said that it cannot view or access personal content fed to Specs Intelligence. “Personal content from connected accounts will not be used to train or fine-tune Snap’s AI models, or to serve personalized ads,” it added.

While Specs Intelligence was the biggest announcement to come out of the event, Snap also unveiled new entertainment features that lets the smart glasses play content from HBO Max and Spotify.

A new programme called Specs for Enterprise allows the device to be integrated into corporate workflows. This is built on top of partnerships with various tech giants such as Amazon, Salesforce, Nvidia, and other firms. The move signals that Specs is being targeted at working professionals as well. For instance, a demo video shows an IT technician repairing some hardware with the help of Snap’s new glasses.

In a similar vein, Snap announced new Specs experiences such as allowing wearers to practice basketball and improve their shot via the glasses’ AR capabilities. This feature has been strengthened by partnerships with the NBA and WNBA.

By teaming up with US-based telecom operator Verizon, Snap also announced a new connectivity package for anyone who wants to use Specs without WiFi. It comes with a charging case that has built-in cellular connectivity, costing $10 a month for Verizon customers and $20 a month for non-Verizon customers.

Earlier this year, Snap said that the upcoming consumer-focused glasses will run on the company’s Snap OS operating system. It further said developers are already working on apps for the device.