Welcome to Lowpass! This week: WiseAR does eye tracking without cameras, and Vizio is in talks with Walmart. Also: Mockumentaries!

Eye tracking for AR could come sooner than you think

I recently began testing Meta’s new Ray-Bans, which now offer access to an AI assistant that uses the device’s camera to look at the world for you. I’ll have more to say about this in the coming weeks, but one of the first things I realized is that talking to an assistant in public can be pretty awkward.

I know, that’s not really news to anyone who has ever summoned Siri or Google Assistant with their earbuds. However, if you see Meta’s Ray-Bans as not just a pair of headphones that happens to live in your glasses, but a precursor to smart glasses with AR displays, then it quickly becomes obvious why voice isn’t going to cut it as an input modality. Can you imagine telling your AI assistant to open up an app, navigate through a complex menu and select a certain item, all while the other people on the bus are staring at you? Yeah, me neither.

That’s why Meta has been working on neural interfaces, as Mark Zuckerberg reminded everyone again this week when he took to Instagram to pan Apple’s Vision Pro headset. Meta’s work focuses primarily on an EMG wristband, capable of detecting mouse click-like interactions and more by monitoring electrical signals traveling to your motor nerves.

There’s a lot to like about that approach – in the future, these kinds of EMG sensors could conceivably be combined with a smart watch or fitness tracker – but it’s not the only possible solution. AT CES in Las Vegas earlier this year, I got a demo from neural interface startup WiseAR that suggests sensors placed in earbuds, or even smart glasses themselves, may be just as useful to control AR interfaces.

Plus, sticking to your face as opposed to your wrist allows WiseAR to do something that’s pretty cool: Eye tracking without a single camera.