DAVID PIERCE described Google Lens as “a long-term bet for the company and a platform for lots of use cases” when he covered the product’s nascent stages for WIRED in 2017. As Google Lens outlasted other experimental forays in the ensuing years, senior writer Lauren Goode wrote about the protracted process of perfecting visual search queries.
Even after five years, Google Lens is still useful for identifying unusual plants and assisting students with their algebra homework. It seems to cover more ground the longer it endures. You’ve used reverse image search, right? That is currently run on Google Lens. Was the Lens software used in the Google I/0 2022 prototype augmented reality glasses? Unverified but very likely.
At the company’s presentation in May, Google CEO Sundar Pichai advocated for a world where augmented reality could be accessed without a smartphone. When you can use augmented reality (AR) capabilities in the real world without technology getting in the way, he continued, “the magic will really come alive.” These AR capabilities are already useful on smartphones.
I went to the business’ San Francisco headquarters and had a conversation with Lou Wang in order to learn more about what Google Lens will be capable of. He has years of experience working on Lens as a director of product management at Google.
Wang sounds certain that smartphones and desktop computers will continue to rule the present when asked how he balances developing high-quality features for the present with planning for the future. Glasses are something that personally excite him, but he admits that it will take some time for them to catch on. In light of the fact that some of the topics we’re discussing, such as scene exploration, are more effective when you don’t need to pull out your phone, our focus is primarily on smartphones.