Now that Google Glass could be back on the menu, we're looking forward to seeing if Project Astra, Google's new supercharged computer vision AI, can finally make smart glasses work. But for now, Google hasn't yet committed to anything with its prototype AI assistant, much less hardware.
To eliminate that immediate annoyance, designers created their own version built using Google's Gemini generation AI. Pietro Cyrano, who previously worked at Uber and Facebook, presented his take on his Google chatbot with vision capabilities called DIY-Astra. Although it's not quite as powerful when compared to Google's own Project Astra or OpenAI's GPT-4o demo, it provides a glimpse into the potential of these improved AI chatbots.
Super fast response
Schirano explained at X that he built DIY-Astra using Gemini 1.5 Flash, Google's lightweight AI model aimed at speed and efficiency. It's not as powerful as Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro, but it's good for things like chatbots and retrieving data from documents.
DIY-Astra works by leveraging your live webcam feed and analyzing what you're seeing with the Google AI API. It then generates a text response based on what it sees before reading the response out loud. According to Schirano's demo, DIY-Astra can handle basic tasks such as identifying what you're looking at through a camera. They can also understand handwritten math problems and provide solutions. This isn't groundbreaking for AI, but we're impressed with how quickly DIY-Astra can understand rapidly changing video feeds and even Cyrano's less-than-ideal handwriting.
early access
Schirano's DIY-Astra may not be as impressive as the real thing, but teeth Available now. The designer has included all the instructions and files in her GitHub repository, which is publicly available to anyone, but you may need some coding skills to build it. In the future, Cyrano said he plans to add voice command capabilities to X, making it more similar to Project Astra.
As for Project Astra in action, Google recently uploaded some demos that show off its prowess through smartphone cameras. It's unclear when Google's prototype assistant will be available to the public, but the company has vaguely hinted that Project Astra will be coming to its products later this year. Until then, at least we have DIY-Astra.