AINEWS
Snap Wants You to Call Specs a Computer, Not AI Glasses
At the Augmented World Expo, CEO Evan Spiegel reframed the company's new AR glasses as a 'see through computer' to escape the privacy stigma of camera first face wearables.
At the Augmented World Expo, CEO Evan Spiegel reframed the company's new AR glasses as a 'see through computer' to escape the privacy stigma of camera first face wearables.
When Evan Spiegel took the stage at the Augmented World Expo on Tuesday to unveil Snap's new Specs AR glasses, the pitch was as much about language as it was about hardware. In a sit-down with Engadget right after the keynote, he drew an explicit line between what Specs is and what he does not want it called.
"I don't want you to call them AI glasses," Spiegel told Engadget. "Specs is a new type of computer, a see-through computer."
That reframe is not pedantry. It is a deliberate attempt to position Snap's product against the camera-first framing that has dominated face-worn devices since Snap's first Spectacles launched in 2016. The category now includes substantially more competition than it did a decade ago: Meta, whose Ray-Ban glasses were recently caught running an unreleased facial-recognition feature that outside researchers discovered and Meta pulled, and a roster of smaller players all shipping or developing smart eyewear.
Specs, which Snap said will go on sale later in 2026, is meant to overlay digital content on the physical world rather than sit on the wearer's face as a camera. "Specs is able to overlay computing on the world around you and bring computing into the world, which is so important if you want to make computing feel more human," Spiegel told Engadget.
The strategic target is the recording-device stigma. Every camera-equipped face wearable launched in the last decade has had to answer the same question: is this for capturing the world, or for augmenting it? Snap's answer is the second one, and the company is willing to fight the lexicon to defend it.
Why the naming fight matters: Snap needs Specs to land somewhere on the price-and-purpose map that does not collide with smart glasses framed primarily as cameras. Calling Specs a computer rather than a pair of glasses is also an explicit attempt to claim adjacency to the spatial-computing narrative Apple has been pushing with the Vision Pro, where the display is the product and the camera is incidental.
The risk for Snap is the same one that has dogged face-worn devices since Google's early Glass experiment: a wearable that the public reads as a surveillance tool. Snap is leaning on a no-facial-recognition policy for Specs — Spiegel explicitly said facial recognition is among the use cases not allowed in its Lenses ecosystem — and on moderation of that developer ecosystem as the trust moat. Both are positioning claims. Whether Snap's "human computing" pitch holds depends on whether the product, the policy, and the price line up when the device ships later this year.
Specs will not be the last face wearable to fight this branding war. Every competitor entering the market over the next 18 months will have to pick a side: computer or camera, overlay or capture. Spiegel just picked for Snap.