Google’s Project Astra May Revolutionize Smart Glasses—but Not Today

When I saw Google’s Project Astra, a real-time computer vision-based UI, last year, I was cautiously excited for the future—the future of smart glasses specifically. In its (admittedly very controlled) demo, Google showed off a vision of real-time computing that combined memory, object recognition, AI, and a voice assistant to hypothesize what could be the ultimate smart glasses computing interface.

In its demo, Google showed Project Astra doing all sorts of useful stuff. If you forget where you left your keys, Astra will remember; if you want to crunch a piece of code you’re looking at, just ask; you want to give your dog a nickname, you’re covered.

If you were as excited about Project Astra as I was, the good news is that it’s back at this year’s Google I/O 2025. In a demo at Google’s annual development conference, it showcased a few new tricks, including improved memory, more applications for web search, and even online shopping. One of the most compelling is computer control, which allows a user to point their phone at an object (say, a bike) and then ask Astra to search for the bike, find some brakes for it, and then even pull up a YouTube tutorial on how to fix it.

Those are all solid improvements for an interface that’s based on computer vision, but they may not be coming to a pair of smart glasses right away. For now, Google’s strategy seems to be splintering off parts of Project Astra into different products that will likely find their home on a phone to begin with.

“Over the past year, we’ve been integrating [Project Astra] capabilities… into Gemini Live for more people to experience today,” said Google in a statement. “We continue to relentlessly improve and explore new innovations at the frontier. For example, we upgraded voice output to be more natural with native audio, we’ve improved memory, and added computer control.”

While Astra being siphoned into other products might be a bummer for anyone eager to finally realize the vision of an all-in-one UI for face computers that can actually replace your phone, it doesn’t mean Project Astra’s application in the glasses world is being left behind—far from it. Lots of those features may very well be perfected and introduced via Google’s Gemini app or Live Search and then eventually returned to some kind of glasses-centric UI later on. Only time will tell on that front, but if the rest of Google’s ambitions (Android XR in particular) are any indication, then Astra might come around to give smart glasses a major upgrade eventually.