Would you pay $20 a month for access to AI hardware that already exists? This appears to be one of Meta’s next moves. This week, it quietly announced that your Glasses’ Conversation Focus feature will soon be limited to three hours of use per month, unless you pay for a $19.99 Meta One Premium subscription.
In a support article, the company emphasizes that Will not done A subscription is required to use your glasses, period; It is simply setting “rate limits” for certain AI features. It’s claimed that even premium subscribers will only get 15 hours of conversation focus per month under that “rate cap”.
The problem is that Meta’s rate cap is ridiculous. The Conversation Focus feature, which amplifies the voice of the person you’re talking to so you can hear better in noisy environments, isn’t something that should probably be rate-limited, since it doesn’t use Meta’s servers. it goes on on deviceUsing the chips inside the glasses you have already purchased. I turned off my internet and it kept working.
Here’s how the company introduced it last year: “[C]OnConversation Focus uses your AI glasses’ open-ear speakers, beamforming technology, and real-time spatial processing to dynamically amplify the voice of the person you’re talking to.
Not only does it bypass Meta’s servers, but Conversation Focus technically doesn’t require an internet connection at all. I double-checked by turning off my phone’s Wi-Fi and cellular, turning on Airplane Mode, and I was still able to properly use Conversation Focus by tapping a button on my phone.
Does Meta have some secret licensing deal with another company that costs them money every time someone uses Conversation Focus? Failing to do so, the rate cap appears completely bogus.
We asked if Meta could explain the move, and whether the company plans to put other on-device features behind the subscription. Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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