It's been a minute since we last saw Google's prototype smart glasses in action but the tech giant recently held demos for them during MWC 2026.
Google's Dieter Bohn showcased a number of features including the ability to use the camera and Nano Banana in combination to take a photo and edit it on the fly. In Dieter's example, he took a photo of a group of people and used Banana to "reimagine" it in front La Sagrada Familia, a famous church in Barcelona — also an excellent board game.
To be fair, Meta's Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses and the newer Ray-Ban Display specs can sort of do this. You can ask the glasses to "re-style" an image into something more hyper stylized like cartoons or oil paintings, but it doesn't do photorealistic work like what Google showed off. Think of it like AI slop versus deep fakes.
Here's the video of the Android XR demo we showed last week at MWC :) Couple things that stand out to me: how well Gemini can handle vague and complex queries and how the glasses work with apps on the phone. 😎More details here! https://t.co/NKA1rKE1rq pic.twitter.com/uXQGwvl7TrMarch 12, 2026
Most of the features Bohn showed off are par for the course for the current generation of AI-powered glasses. The Google-Xreal collaboration Project Aura glasses, for example, have many of the same features that we previewed at the end of last year.
When we last saw the Google prototypes in December, we were able to use Live Translation to transcribe and translate Chinese to English. Bohn's demo showcased a similar example.
Additionally, he showed the ability to identify real world objects and use Gemini to prompt off of those items. For example, in one case the glasses identified a Queen album and then played a song. In another example, a poster with an address was used to find walking directions and displayed a map.
He was also able to take a live Google Meet call that involved sharing video and live chatting with a coworker.
The future of Google glasses
Dieter Bohn made sure to emphasize that these glasses are still prototypes and not what "the final versions will look and feel like." He noted that the MWC versions had clip-on prescriptions that won't be in the final versions, though he did not elaborate on whether prescription lenses would be possible.
He also promised more information about display-free AI glasses, Project Aura, and Samsung's Galaxy XR in the coming months. Samsung has promised its Android XR glasses will launch this year and will probably feature many of the same Gemini-based tools.
Most likely the next time Google says anything about the future of Android XR and smart glasses will be at Google I/O 2026 which will take place starting on May 19. Tom's Guide will be on hand for any news Google drops that week, so keep us in your tabs.
