It’s been a minute since we last saw Google’s prototype smart glasses in action, but the tech giant recently held a demo of the smart glasses during MWC 2026.
Google’s Dieter Born introduced a number of features, including the ability to combine your camera with Nano Banana to take photos and edit them on the fly. In Dieter’s example, he took a photo of a group of people in front of Barcelona’s famous church, the Sagrada Familia, and “reimagined” it using bananas. This is also a great board game.
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Here’s a video of the Android XR demo we showed off at MWC last week 🙂 What stands out to me is how well Gemini handles vague and complex queries, and how the glasses work with apps on your phone. 😎Click here for details! https://t.co/NKA1rKE1rq pic.twitter.com/uXQGwvl7TrMarch 12, 2026
Most of the features Vaughn showed off are par for the course for the current generation of AI-powered glasses. For example, Project Aura glasses, a collaboration between Google and Xreal, have many of the same features that we previewed late last year.
When we last saw Google’s prototype in December, it was able to transcribe Chinese and translate it into English using live translation. A similar example was introduced in Bourne’s demo.
Additionally, he has demonstrated the ability to identify objects in the real world and remove those objects using Gemini. For example, in one case, the glasses identified a Queen album and played the song. In another example, a poster with an address was used to find walking directions and display a map.
I was also able to participate in live Google Meet calls that included video sharing and live chat with colleagues.
The future of Google glasses
Dieter Bohn emphasized that these glasses are still prototypes and not “what the final version will look like or feel like.” He noted that the MWC version has a clip-on prescription, which will not be included in the final version, but did not elaborate on whether prescription lenses are possible.
He also promised more information about AI glasses without a display. Project Aura, and Samsung’s Galaxy XR coming in the coming months. Samsung has promised to launch Android XR Glasses this year, and they’ll likely feature many of the same Gemini-based tools.
Perhaps the next time Google will say something about the future of Android XR and smart glasses will be at Google I/O 2026, which starts on May 19th. Tom’s Guide covers all the news from Google that week, so stay tuned.
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