When AI blurs magic and technology

Last year at IFA in Berlin, I was able to check out a new wearables startup called Rokid. From afar their booth looked like a peddler of Meta Ray-Bans. And it seemed like this at first because what was on the demo floor was a beta product, devoid of the many features that make Rokid what it is today.

Fast forward to six months later. I’m back in the Philippines sitting across from McGyver Yu (yes that’s his name) – a peddler of wearable tech and as his name connotes, he has all sorts of gadgetry that uses technology to rethink the many ways we interact with the world.

The Rokid AI glasses he showed me were the final product of what I saw in Berlin: AI-powered glasses with a green Fallout-like HUD that, for brevity, “will make the blind see, and the deaf hear.”

Magic is technology

I remember a quote from Arthur C. Clarke where he said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Marvel’s Thor put it more simple: “your ancestors call it magic, but you call it science.”

I have been using the Rokid AI glasses for the better part of the year and I’ve been floored by what it can do. McGyver Yu told me that he has had emotional experiences with many of his clients who are PWD – either deaf, or mute, or blind. The glasses harness the power of AI (you can switch between Alibaba’s Quen, Google Gemini, and OpenAI models) to make sense of the world around you. 

If you are visually impaired, you can have the cameras take photos of reading material or menus and have the on-board AI read it to you. 

@abuggedlife I'm living in the future with the #Rokid ♬ original sound – A Bugged Life by Jayvee

If you are deaf or hard of hearing, you can watch a movie and the live transcription from the speakers will add subtitles to conversations from a 360 degree space.

If you lack the confidence to speak in public, you can pull up your speech and the prompter on the glasses will scroll as you speak.

If you are in a foreign country, the live language translation either by subtitles or in-ear speech can unburnden connections.

I’ve been in weird situations where I had live translation turned on in Singapore and two girls were having a conversation in Mandarin. One of them asked if the other was okay and she replied, “no.” I quickly glanced at them.

They glanced back at me. Yikes.The power of technology!

Under the hood, the glasses act as a multi-model hub. While it features native Google Gemini integration for voice conversations and contextual search, the international version also lets you swap between OpenAI’s ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Alibaba’s Qwen. This flexibility means you are not locked into a single ecosystem’s blind spots. It is a Best-in-Slot tool for navigating physical environments when your own senses need an assist.

Available with Smart

The real barrier to entry for this kind of assistive technology has always been the steep acquisition cost. Dropping heavy cash upfront for niche hardware is a difficult sell for most households. However, a new partnership with Smart Communications is shifting that acquisition meta locally. 

Starting May 29, 2026, Smart is bundling these AI glasses with their postpaid line. For those on a Plans+ 1499 account, you can get the hardware for a cash-out of Php 28,800, while premium subscribers on Smart Infinity Plan 8000 can get the glasses entirely free.