Indian Startup QWR Unveils AI-Powered Smart Glasses Humbl, to Be Shipped Later This Year

Question What's Real (QWR), an Indian deep-tech startup, announced Humbl, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered smart glasses, on Thursday. The startup claims that Humbl is the first made in India AI smart glasses, and offers features similar to the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses. The glasses are said to come equipped with an AI assistant that can record videos, summarise conversations, play music, help with navigation, and more. The startup plans to officially launch the glasses later this month, and claims to start shipping the device later this year.

QWR Unveils AI-Powered Smart Glasses

In a press release, the deep-tech startup unveiled its latest product and said that Humbl is focused towards utility, discretion, and contextual awareness. The company did not share a lot of details about the device, but based on its features and appearance, it is pretty similar to the Ray-Ban Meta.

Humbl can be worn as simple sunglasses, but its real usability is when the AI assistant is activated with the wake phrase “Hey Humbl.” Once awake, it can record point-of-view videos based on voice commands. It can also summarise meetings and conversations, set reminders, provide directions to a place, and play music entirely hands-free and with voice inputs. Additionally, the AI assistant can also provide real-time translations.

The company highlighted that the AI assistant in the smart glasses can collect and process data coming from audio and video channels. The device has cameras that provides it the visual feed, using which it can recognise items and landmarks, and know when the user is reaching a turn to guide them to their destination.

However, QWR did not mention any hardware specifications or details about the large language model (LLM) that is powering the AI assistant. Additionally, while the device is expected to be launched later this month, the startup said that the device itself will not be shipped to buyers till the last quarter of 2025. As of writing this, the startup's website does not even mention the product, although there are some promotional videos on its social media channels.

QWR was founded by Suraj Aiar in 2017, and works in the field of augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and extended reality (XR). The startup has manufactured and sells two different VR headsets as well as smart glasses dubbed Aurl. The latter is an audio-based (integrated speakers) smart glasses, and does not feature video cameras.