For most of the past decade, the smartphone has been the undisputed gateway to the digital world. Now, a growing number of technology companies are wagering that the next gateway will sit on the bridge of your nose. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has placed one of the most visible bets in that race, launching an AI agent called Muse that is designed to run on its Ray-Ban smart glasses rather than on a handheld screen. Muse represents a significant strategic shift for Meta, which has invested heavily in wearable hardware after years of mixed results in the consumer device market.

The agent is built to respond to voice commands, interpret the wearer's visual surroundings in real time, and deliver information through a small speaker rather than a glowing display. That approach reflects a broader industry conviction: that the friction of unlocking a phone, opening an app, and reading a screen is a problem worth solving — and that AI is finally capable enough to solve it. Meta is not alone in this conviction. Several major technology firms across North America and Asia have been exploring form factors that go beyond the rectangle of glass and aluminium that has dominated consumer technology since 2007.

Smart glasses, earbuds with embedded assistants, and even AI-enabled rings have all attracted significant investment in recent years, as companies compete to establish which device category will own the next era of human-computer interaction.