Chris Harrison, director of the Future Interfaces Group at Carnegie Mellon University, doesn’t think the new subscription is to help pay for Meta’s AI spending. “The industry has made tremendous strides, even in the last six months, but certainly in the last 18 months, improving token generation efficiency—running these models much more efficiently,” Harrison says. “It’s not about recovering AI costs; it’s about monetizing customers.”
As adoption grows, Harrison says, this is a way of “extracting value” from the platform. The company’s glasses are typically sold at cost, like the new $299 Meta-branded glasses that ditch the fancy Ray-Ban branding for an even lower price. Harrison says this helps get the glasses out in the world and increases the user base—then the subscription service grows revenue.
But the danger of introducing subscription tiers is that a competitor comes in and offers all, if not most, of those features without charging users a monthly fee. One of those competitors is around the corner: Google is set to debut its own smart glasses later this year, made in collaboration with Samsung and eyewear brands Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. There are no details on the pricing nor whether there will be a subscription tier, but Harrison says Google has shown just how much more efficient it has become at running its AI models, and it may be better poised to absorb the cost instead of structuring features through pricing tiers.
That’s not to say that Google doesn’t have usage limits. On its Pixel phones, you need a specific tier of the Google One subscription plan to use features like Video Boost, which sends your video footage to Google’s Cloud to improve lighting, color, stabilization, and noise reduction. Google’s Gemini chatbot is free to use, but if you want certain features, like Gemini Spark, you’ll need to subscribe. On the new Google Home Speaker, you need the Google Home Premium subscription to use the more conversational Gemini Live experience.
Apple is also rumored to be working on smart glasses, and the company isn’t immune to usage limits. If you use the new AI photo-editing features coming in iOS 27 too much, you’ll need to subscribe to a higher iCloud+ tier to continue using them.
“All of these will have to deliver value, or people will pick the free version,” Harrison says. And Meta must think that these features provide meaningful value. A feature like Conversation Focus—folks with hearing impediments may find that it could improve their quality of life.
“Is that worth $10 a month? Probably,” he says.
