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Amazon might be developing its own augmented reality smart glasses to compete with Meta, according to Amazon insiders who worked on the project. Codenamed “Jayhawk,” the smart specs will reportedly feature a camera, microphones, speakers, and a full-color display in one eye, all packed in a sleek frame. If the rumors, as reported by The Information, turn out to be true, Amazon’s smart glasses will hit the market in late 2026 or early 2027.
The goal, presumably, is to not cede the entire smart glasses market to industry leader Meta and newcomers like Google (we’ll pretend Google Glass never happened). Whether Amazon can compete on that field remains to be seen, but the company’s last stab at tech glasses, the audio-and-Alexa-focused Echo Frames line of smart glasses, didn’t exactly set the world on fire when they were released back in 2019, despite being generally regarded as adequate (though uninspiring).
Amazon drivers may get their own AR smart glasses, too
Amazon is also reportedly developing smart glasses specifically for its delivery drivers. These will feature the same technology as the consumer devices in a sturdier package, and give drivers turn-by-turn navigation on a small embedded screen. According to a report from Reuters in late 2024, the delivery driver glasses are designed to provide extremely precise, location-based directions, in order to “shave valuable seconds off each delivery by providing left or right directions off elevators and around obstacles such as gates or aggressive dogs.”
What do you think so far?
It’s hard to avoid considering the nightmarish possibilities of an employer being able to literally look through the eyes of its workers—imagine your boss yelling at you through your eyeballs. Smart glasses could easily track eye movements, pauses, or even monitor employees’ emotions through facial expressions and voice analysis. Whether Amazon, a company sued for enforcing a schedule so strict that drivers were forced to urinate in bottles, would use the technology in these, or other exploitative ways, remains to be seen.
