Real-world ads eliminate: Engineer invents augmented reality glasses to block advertisements in daily life, ensuring no more product promotions or branding.
Ready to step into a world free from inescapable ads? Meet the revolutionary augmented reality app, brought to you by a crafty Belgian programmer named Stijn Spanhove. This ingenious creation, using none other than Google's Gemini AI, aims to give you the power to filter out advertisements and branding in real-life, transforming your vision with the stroke of a key.
Imagine donning Snap's fifth-generation AR Spectacles, and voila! Billboards, posters, even product packaging become sanitized as the app identifies and blocks off ads in your periphery. Replacing obnoxious ad content and brand names with a red square, the app leaves you to enjoy your surroundings without distraction.
Still in its early stages, Spanhove dreams big for this innovative app. Who knows? Perhaps users could soon replace those searing red squares with custom images or notes from a favorite app, tailoring their visual experience without limits.
As exclusive as a VIP lounge, this ad-blocking app is so far only available on Snap's AR Spectacles. Given that it relies on Snap-shared APIs and libraries, it appears that, for the moment, Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest enthusiasts will have to wait before experiencing a similar ad-free reality.
Still, Snap marches on while others falter, with its AR Spectacles having been in development since 2016. While big players like Microsoft and Meta have dialed back or paused their augmented reality projects, Snap soldiers on, offering its fifth-gen Spectacles to developers for a cool $99 a month.
For average folks not sporting development chops, a genuine They Live anti-propaganda glasses experience might still be/is a bit off in the future. However, as the app evolves, the questions it raises become increasingly intriguing. What if we could control who and what we perceive in this world, however temporarily? For the time being, it's still the same world, just with some red rectangles subtly altering our view.
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In the future, smart-home devices, such as the fifth-generation AR Spectacles, might be integrated with the ad-blocking app to filter out ads not only in the digital realm but also in real-life surroundings. As technology advances, gadgets like these could potentially allow users to customize their visual experiences, further blurring the line between reality and augmented reality.
