Meta Ray Ban UK user needs help please

It's a lot easier to justify as an explicit accessibility device and as a smaller company, Meta being a giant will have a lot of eyes on everything remotely privacy related and has more than enough money to make it a tempting target for lawyers. Even if Be My AI might technically be beholden to similar rules they're not big enough to be worth targetting and the potential bad publicity for a legal firm or government isn't worth the meager reward.

Hi,
For those who don't know, Meta recently sent a message to the double tap podcast specifying that the look and tell feature for meta AI is definitely not available in the UK, and they don't know when it will be available.

A question. Is this an EU versus UK thing? Or does this cover the entire continent of Europe?
I ask because, this seems detrimental to both their customer base, and their bottom line. I mean let's be honest, even sighted people get these classes for the AI services.

Hi Brian,
it's about privacy regulations across Europe and the UK. The AI is available here, the only thing that isn't available is the look and tell feature. I'm not sure which aspects of the AI are even available in the rest of Europe.

I can't say for certain whether certain shared regulations would make spreading between EU countries easier or harder given they all have their own legislation to deal with as well but the decision to launch or not in the UK is no different than any other primarily english speaking country, there is no relationship between the timing of release here compared to that in EU countries.

Edit
The same process will have to happen with non-EU european countries in addition to the extra localisation work. In all these cases it's no different to launching in say Japan or South Korea, it will have to be done individually and with legal advice from lawyers specialising in the country in question's own laws.

Whilst it was good that Meta at least replied, it did feel like a lot of nothing. They didn't really say any more than what has been in the release notes. They neither confirmed nor denied the UK would be getting it, nor gave any indication of when. It was about as non-commital as you can get.

There is something sadly ironic that the only celebrity voice on the glasses is someone suffering from sight loss. When she tells me that look and ask isn't available in my region, it doesn't make me feel much better.

Meta has released the UK update for Rayban Meta glasses as of 10th April 2025 that allows us to use the Look feature.

Can anyone confirm they got it working in the UK? I know it was announced but I don't want to spend this much on some glasses to find it's a slow roll out and I might be waiting weeks for it to reach me.

The news release said that it is rolling out from yesterday. It hasn't appeared for me yet. I think it will likely take a few weeks to reach everyone.

I would be interested to know when it starts turning up for others though.

If one of us can set up a new post for when it is out out. I've checked a couple of times but have a bit of revulsion toward them. We've ben treated pretty badly and I, for one, feel a bit burned. I'm basically waiting for the same experience I had almost a year ago to come back... Consider me underwhelmed.

I figured the same but like you was curious when people would start getting it.

I must admit I slightly lost the love for the glasses after losing access. Although the VPN trick wasn't really something they supported. But it is baffling how it has taken this long.

However I will entirely forgive them the second I have it back.

Just remember that it does seem to be a gradual rollout, so some of us might get it a few weeks after others. But it's nearly here, and for real this time.

They also promised the real time translation thing would be coming shortly afterwards I believe. Not sure I will use this a lot but I am looking forward to playing with it.

I wonder if we will get the full conversational multi-modal thing too soon now.

Now there is a possibly cheaper specialist option, cheaper than the Envision glasses, I'm holding out for those. The EchoVision is designed for blind people in mind.

First, they will be slightly more expensive than the Ray-Ban metas but in my experience anything specifically developed for the blind is not only more expensive but also looks terrible. I’ve had my metas for just over 8 months and haven’t had any issues. As for the folks in the UK it will likely be a gradual rollout similar to how OpenAI handled the ChatGPT voice and video situation. Companies do this to avoid server overloading.

Regarding the reasons behind the delayed rollout to the UK the Look and Tell feature took so long to arrive because of strict data and privacy laws.

In the US and Canada Meta was able to roll it out fairly quickly because the rules around AI cameras and facial or object recognition aren’t as stringent. However in the UK there are stricter regulations particularly regarding how data is collected stored and used when using AI to identify objects text or landmarks through a wearable device.

Here’s a simple breakdown

Privacy concerns The UK has strong privacy laws. Meta had to ensure that the glasses wouldn’t accidentally collect personal information such as names on mail envelopes faces or license plates without permission.

Data protection rules like GDPR Anything that gathers or processes visual data in real time especially something wearable must adhere to strict GDPR standards. This includes how the glasses handle what they see and how they store or delete that data.

Accessibility and safety checks Before launching Meta had to ensure the feature was safe accurate and beneficial for the public especially for blind and visually impaired users. Essentially they couldn’t simply switch it on like they did in the US. They had to navigate through numerous legal and compliance hurdles to avoid violating UK laws or compromising privacy. This is what caused the lengthy delay.

Yes, we do have strict privacy laws here. Slightly more expensive is OK, I'd rather slightly more expensive than having to pay a couple of thousand for the Envision glasses. As for the way the EchoVision glasses are gonna look, that's a slight concern, but if they're better than the Meta Ray-bans, I'll probably still get them provided there won't be a huge monthly subscription cost in the future. The Seleste glasses were just too expensive.

I know there might be a difference of multiple weeks between different people receiving the functionality but part of the reason I asked is because once it starts hitting we can get a sense of the pace of the rollout, the other reason is a certain subconscious I'll believe it when I see it hovering in the back of my brain. I'm not buying anything especially in the three figure price range based on a promise without confirmation.

Definitely watching this with interest, the more I hear about these, the more I’m convinced to buy some in the near future. Would love to hear more from people who have used them about how useful they find them in day-to-day life.

I had a notification this morning that my app was updated and the list of new features includes look and tell in UK, but glasses – although up-to-date dash don’t seem to be doing anything from the new feature list yet.

I’m tempted to try resetting everything, but not convinced that will even have the desired result. So will be patient for now, but if anyone has the new features now in the UK it would be great to hear…

Hi, I tried a reset yesterday in the hope the look and tell feature would start working but so far no change.

All the bestg

Hello, everyone.
I am really struggling with this issue.
Yesterday, I received the glasses.
I contacted my cousin, who lives in Canada, and asked her to subscribe to the early access program, as the VPN is detected by Meta in our region.
I also asked her to log in to my account on their AI chat website, meta.ai, and since then, I have been able to access the website in Germany.
However, whenever I talk to the glasses, it respond: I cannot du that in your glasses.
Does anyone have a solution to relieve my frustration?

After reading the above I checked for updates and saw the same thing. Installed the update, quit and reopened the app, turned the glasses off and on, but still it's not working. Hopefully just a matter of waiting a little longer.

During the above I was experiencing the problem with it starting to play my audio book all the time. Sitting on the progress bar it was speaking it out from time to time, and as it did so it would resume the book. I flicked VO off the progress bar and doing that also started playing. It's really annoying.

I also noticed this update brings support for other things like Shazam, Spotify and some other things. (I presume the Spotify change is being able to ask for specific songs to play, but as Spotify is down globally right now it's a bit hard to test it.)

I tried asking about the UV index which is something you are apparently able to do with version 14, but that doesn’t work so assuming none of the new features are active yet…

Yesterday my Meta View app updated to version 14.1 and it did an update on the glasses. I tried restarting my phone but nothing seemed to have changed. However today I quit the app and when I went back into it it offered me the new AI look features. So exciting! Hope others are having similar success now…

This morning I noticed that when I tried look and ask it was telling me to go enable camera in MetaView under the AI settings. When I looked, there was no such thing. I found there was yet another update for MetaView and installed it. Then when I opened it, it asked me if I wanted to enable look and ask. I said yes and it is now working again.

I suspect if I had just closed and reopened the app instead of updating it might also have prompted me.

So glad to hear, definitely I’m very interested in acquiring one of these.

I also got this, a notification earlier today, had to agree to allow access.

What is the command for turning on the live look thing? I'm guessing we don't have it, but would like to try.

Nice to be back in the same place I was ten months ago... Yawn.