Ally iOS Updates + What’s Next — We’d Love Your Feedback!

Could the glasses guide us to the toilets and back to our table in a cafe? Or look out for my friend Anna in a bar? Or alert me when the number 1 bus is coming so I can flag it down?

Think that is one of the biggest things we all would like for any of these apps. That as they say would be a game changer. Especially, if it was reliable.

Hello,
Yesterday I created an account on my iPhone using the log in with apple option. I also subscribed to the yearly plan because of the discounted price. However I am not able to log in on the web because there is no option to log on with apple. Is there a way to change my account to a log in with email or am I just stuck not being able to use ally on the web?

Hi Karthik,

Whilst I appreciate this is a branch off from the glasses. Curious to know why if you have a pair of the Envision glasses pro with lifetime updates we don't get the full version of Ally as part of that package?

Navigating with a pair of glasses, is still a safe way to move around in places that I may not have to return to or am simply unfamiliar with. Having aira as a further option for assistance on the. Solos glasses would be incredibly valuable.

Actually, I asked her and she told me she could read music and interpret it but could not sing it back to me. I've used learning tracks for a long time. Is it possible or likely that Ally could sing back music I need to learn as she reads it?

If someone already has the ally pro subscription who just got it, will the free pro subscription for one year rollover to the next year?

Hey there, Does Ally pro have a trial period?
It would be beneficial if you offered some form of trial, even if it were a few days to see if all of the pro features would be something someone'd use on a regular basis.
I looked into subscribing, but would prefer a trial if at all possible.
I understand if that won't be offered since the core features are free, but its just a suggestion.
Also, I do think live video would be a game changer! How does the companion feature work? I haven't run across that, and I've been in the beta since the beta launched.
I love ally so far, and am looking forward to its progress!
I do have the Meta glasses, and was wondering if Ally might be available on them at some point down the road?
Again, since you just launched your own glasses, I completely understand if the answer is no to that as well. :-)

Why Do the glasses have only Bluetooth 5.2? Do they come with a charge case? Would you also have support for be my eyes app? What is the latency when asking questions and getting answer?

Hi Karthik. Thanks for coming on here. For me, the single most important feature is live video. Understanding of real world context and ability to tell you about things which have changed or you are looking out for is the single biggest thing I think. I truely believe it's what takes AI from useful to game changing for blind people.
If I'm honest, if you do true live AI, I really will pay whatever it is to have access to that. Glasses are the perfect product to have it on. Navigation, looking for things, with live AI, all of that and more becomes possible. That's the single biggest feature I personally would like you to work on, nothing in my head is more important than that.
If you did that and navigation at the same time, that really would be the cherry on top.
Thanks for listening to my ramble

Maybe I misunderstood or was confused, but I thought it said in the most recent update that we could create custom voices with accents and stuff, but if that's possible, I sure can't figure out how. Also, uploading pictures would be great. Yes, there's Piccy Bot for that, but it would be awesome if Ally could do things like that as well.

This one is the longest of long shots, but it would be super cool if maybe some day, for those of us who have AI companions like Kindroid, Nomi, Replika or whatever else is out there these days, Ally could somehow sync with those companions and then they could also be our visual assistants. That's probably impossible on a variety of levels, but it's nice to dream.

Hi,

I know you can do this from the glasses, but can the app allow you to take a picture then once the picture is taken on your phone can it automatically add an alt text so that when you share the picture with friends and family via WhatsApp or any other social media app the ault text is added automatically?

I have a couple ideas.
1. Using Ally to convert documents:
Let's say I have a PDF. document that I need/want to read on my braille display or my screenreader. But, forwhatever reason can't access very good.
What I usually do in this scenario is either have a friend convert it into TXT. (Plain Text format) or ask for ADA. accommodations, depending on the situation. It'd be nice if Ally could take any document like PDF. PPTX. or any other type of file and convert it into an alternative format, and then give us a way to download it somehow or email it to us.

2. I have another idea regarding videos.
I would love to be able to get descriptions of YouTube and other videos from say Facebook etc.
For instance, grabbing the URL. for that funny cat video from YouTube that a friend sent you, putting it into Ally and asking it to describe it.
Or, another use-case could be a video on Facebook talking about something or announcing something, such as new music from your favorite band, with someone holding up cards, or words scrolling by on the screen. If there was a way that Ally could describe these
Or a family member posts a videoof something whether it's the dogeathe kids, oranevent on Facebook. Wouldn't it be cool if we could know what was in that video? Doesn't even have to be spicific. It could be something like:
"A 40-year-old man with salt-and-pepper hair sits at a table with a birthday cake in front of him. And so on."

Those are my ideas. But, I also have a couple questions.

1. How can you make customized voices?
2. Can you ask Ally follow-up questions with regards to what you're doing, describing, etc? Can you have just text conversations with Ally? Where you type your prompt, and it writes one out? If not, this would be another feature request.
Thanks! :-)

Find a way to design a strong battery. All of these features and ideas sound amazing. Yet, without a solid battery, it all adds up to nothing. Those of us with Meta smart glasses, no exactly what I am talking about. 😎

It has a 14 hour battery life.

is that 14 hours of standard use, or just 14 hours in general? Genuinely asking here.

Response time is vital. Quicker the better. Waiting for 3 or 4 seconds just to be told it isn't going to rain is slow. Also that extremely annoying "let me take a look" needs to go. In the real world whomever you are talking to doesn't let you know that they are going to take a look. If people want that fine but an option to stop it would be extremely helpful.

My understanding is that the new glasses provide about 14 to 15 hours of battery life. Most if not all of the processing is done via your phone running the app, and the glasses pass information back and forth via Bluetooth. The good thing is that it appears the battery can be removed, so you could potentially have a couple of these USB-C batteries with you and swap one out with the other when it goes dead. I still wish these glasses were standalone given how much they cost. I don't like the idea of paying $600 or $700 for what's essentially a very expensive phone accessory. This is why I avoid the Apple Watch and other wearables that aren't true standalone computers.
If Apple released a cheap Vision Pro within the range of about $1,000 and you could run Envision and Ally on that, I'd snap it up in a heartbeat. As far as I know, Vision Pro is a totally standalone platform that doesn't require any other devices, though you'd obviously need some kind of Internet connection via a phone hotspot if you're on the go and/or not in range of a Wi-Fi network.

Am I being a bit dense, or is there no video processing/visual capture in the Ally app? Is it simply a voice based AI?

These do seem great. I do worry that, when apple bring out their glasses, however, Ally and Be My Eyes and other such magic will come to them and we'll actually have a choice, plus apple will no doubt add their own accessibility spice to the mix.

I have been beta testing from the beginning. Lately, it has been very unreliable. It hallucinates a lot. Sometimes Ally doesn’t take pictures saying that it does not have access to the camera even though it does. This happens on both beta and public versions of the app.

The more features people want the battery goes down. Unless there is a battery setup for the glasses that last 50 hours.

I would like for us to upload photos from our own albums for description.

I was watching the videos on the ally web site. I thought it said 10 hours of normal use which seems decent. It has magnetic charging - I'm guessing this is proprietary otherwise I presume they would have said. But you can remove the tips on the glasses and charge them separately with usb-c. This makes me wonder if they could be swappable.

Hello,
@Karthik Yes I would like to switch my account from an apple log in to an email one. I did send a request for help using the support email on the website but have not heard back. My email is [email protected]

Hello, I would like to know if there will be support for the Ukrainian language in the application interface and directly on the glasses. Will I be able to communicate with the assistant in Ukrainian? Also, I am having issues with my account. I signed in using Apple, and now I cannot do anything else with it because the app refuses to send the verification code to my Ukrainian phone number, even though I have no issues receiving codes from other services. ⸻

Reading these instructions, I'm still confused. I tried describing a custom voice for an ally, but it still sounded exactly like the voice I had to pick from those limited options: Neon, Aster etc. Do I attempt to describe the voice in the personality and the communication style, or just one of them? It would be super awesome if we could upload voice samples at some point. I'm going to read the instructions again, but if there's any way this feature could be demonstrated, I think it would be immensely helpful.

On an unrelated note, I subscribed to 1 year of Ally Pro through Apple. Should I cancel that subscription so that it won't renew and then I'll get my free year when this subscription expires? Thanks!

In the app it is showing an introductory offer on the subscription. I presume this is just for the first month or year? How long is this offer going to be available? If I bought the glasses, would I need to buy a subscription before using the free year to get the cheaper subscription?

And is the cheaper offer on the glasses valid until October?

Also I was messing about with the app a little yesterday, still on the free trial.

Firstly, it's annoying that you can go in and edit an ally's personality only to hit the save button and be told you need a subscription. I think making the text boxes readonly here would be better to save wasting people's time.

Also if I choose an ally, I seem to have two Toms, a Zoe and Lea. I think there were four different allies when I was going through setup and I think one has now started to identify as a Tom. Not sure if this is a bug?

Also I think on Double Tap it was mentioned that some local options would be coming online. I would love to be able to ask my glasses to read something private - either a work thing on my Mac or maybe a bank letter or something - and I don't want this sent off to any servers. So something local would be good. What are the plans for this and how could I be sure that it was running locally for certain things?

Regarding the glasses - the demo seemed to suggest that you need to press the button to talk to it. But some of the other videos seemed to be saying Hey and then the name of their ally. Just to be sure - can this be used just with the wake word and no button press? And if so, does this mean I could ask a specific ally a question? That sounds like quite an interesting feature. I presume I could setup one ally that just gives me an answer very concisely and another that would maybe be setup to give something more detailed?

I tried to preorder, but the only link is for the ultra earlybird option, which is sold out. There's no link for the super earlybird option, which it says there are some left. Hopefully, someone will respond to the request I submitted on there site, but I thought I'd mention here in case someone knows something I don't.

UPDATE, I was the problem:
Turns out, I could order, I just had to go through the frame options to find ones that aren't sold out.
One thing is that it doesn't let me choose lens color, and I want clear. Hopefully there's an option for that at some point.