Interview with Facebook's Andrew Bosworth on Project Aria, its AR glasses project that is using ~100 testers in Seattle and SF to refine the experience
a new research effort that will help us understand how to build software & hardware necessary for AR glasses. Our vision of AR requires a foundational shift in computing technology—Project Aria is a step in that direction: https://tech.fb.com/... Nikhil Chandhok / @chandhok : Big day for AR at FB 1/ We announced that Spark AR is the largest AR ecosystem in the world! https://sparkar.facebook.com/ ... 2/ We are building glasses with Luxottica https://www.facebook.com/... 3/ Project Aria https://tech.fb.com/... 4/ AR in Portal and Msgr https://tech.fb.com/... Scott Stein / @jetscott : Btw this comment from @boztank on VR is something at the end of my AR story but I'm thinking about- says VR already has Batman but needs more Bruce Wayne. Imagined identities vs “real ID” that it looks like FB is trying to resolve https://www.cnet.com/... Lance Ulanoff / @lanceulanoff : Some more details on Project Aria. #FacebookConnect #Facebook https://twitter.com/... Benedict Evans / @benedictevans : Apple yesterday versus FB VR today is a good case study of two approaches to innovation. Apple ships things that are finished, and have a complete use case, and then iterates on them and joins them up. FB is shipping work in progress to bootstrap adoption. Sean Hollister / @starfire2258 : Okay, so... Facebook is telling us the Ray-Bans will not be AR. Aria is AR. Aria is not a prototype for the Ray-Bans. Aria is an exploration of what might come... after. The Ray-Bans are simply “smart glasses,” whatever that means. FB says they'll rely on phone display. Alex Heath / @alexeheath : The Aria glasses are packed with sensors, including front-facing cameras and mics, but they don't have displays in them that achieve true AR—overlaying graphics onto the real world. Such displays are “one of the biggest challenges we're going to have as an industry,” said Boz. Alex Heath / @alexeheath : Plenty of privacy concerns to think through with people wearing computers on their faces. FB says the glasses' data will be only used for research & that wearers will be identified and trained on how to use them in public. This tech is moving faster than most people realize! Alex Heath / @alexeheath : This is Facebook's first part of smart glasses: Project Aria. Facebook's head of AR/VR @boztank told me that about 100 Facebook staffers/contractors will start wearing these in public to gather data for future, more high-tech glasses. https://www.theinformation.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Scott Stein / @jetscott : Zuckerberg discussing the name change. Facebook is front and center in name of VR/AR. Covers larger umbrella of neural interfaces, home, software projects and AR. Thanks: @jetscott
Context & Ripple Effects
Project Aria is the field-research leg of a bet Facebook has been making for years — CTO Mike Schroepfer framed AR expertise as existential back in 2018, arguing the company needs it to stay relevant on a 10-to-20-year horizon. The announcement bundles several threads at once: Spark AR claimed as the world's largest AR ecosystem, AR features coming to Portal and Messenger, and a glasses partnership with Luxottica.
The key distinction Facebook is drawing: the Ray-Ban-branded glasses built with Luxottica will ship without AR features and are explicitly not a prototype for Aria. Aria itself stays a research device — roughly 100 identified, trained Facebook staffers and contractors wearing it in Seattle and San Francisco, with the data restricted to research use.
First-order effects
- About 100 Facebook employees and contractors begin wearing sensor-laden Aria devices through two major cities, making Facebook's data-collection practices visible on public streets rather than inside its apps.
- Andrew Bosworth's team gets real-world capture data to inform both the software and hardware requirements for eventual AR glasses, while the Luxottica partnership proceeds on a separate, non-AR track.
Second-order effects
- Bystander privacy becomes the immediate battleground: Facebook has pre-empted criticism by committing that Aria data is research-only and wearers are identifiable and trained, but the optics of Facebook cameras in public set the terms on which any consumer version will be judged.
- The follow-up interviews with Michael Abrash and Bosworth on how personal data from the glasses would be used show Facebook managing the narrative ahead of hardware, while its Reality Labs work on amplifying what users try to hear signals the software layer being built in parallel.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Facebook is positioning to own a full wearable stack — it has reportedly tasked a co-author of Windows NT with building an OS from scratch so Oculus and Portal stop depending on Android — reducing its exposure to mobile-platform gatekeepers as computing moves off the phone.
- Field trials like Aria establish the template for how always-on sensor hardware enters public space: small, identified, consent-trained cohorts before consumers, a playbook regulators and rivals like Apple will likely be measured against.
The trend: Consumer AR is advancing through staged real-world data collection, with Facebook pairing research wearables and non-AR branded glasses to build toward face-worn computing while controlling the privacy story.