What you need to know
- WhatsApp could be working on allowing users to dictate messages through Facebook Assistant on the Ray-Ban Stories.
- The feature is likely to be exclusive to Meta's pair of smart glasses.
- It was discovered in the latest beta version of WhatsApp.
Meta appears to be working on a new way for WhatsApp users to send messages to friends and family without even touching their phones.
According to an APK teardown by XDA Developers, the latest beta version of WhatsApp (v2.22.9.13) contains evidence indicating that the messaging app may soon allow you to send someone a message using only your voice on the Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses.
The strings uncovered in the teardown suggest that this feature will allow you to dictate a message to a digital assistant, eliminating the need to take your phone out of your pocket.
However, it appears that this will only work with Facebook Assistant. This means that the voice assistant support may not be compatible with Google Assistant.
Assuming it gets rolled out sometime in the future, the Assistant support comes in handy when you're out and about and need to message someone on WhatsApp. Your chats are also likely to be end-to-end encrypted, which isn't surprising given WhatsApp's focus on encryption.
There's no guarantee, though, that it will make its way to the public. In addition, given Ray-Ban Stories' limited market reach at present, the feature is not likely to benefit a large number of WhatsApp users.
Fortunately for Ray-Ban Stories owners who prefer to use Messenger, Meta released an update late last year that added hands-free Messenger support to the smart glasses. This enables the wearables to send and read messages to you through voice commands.
Ray-Ban Stories combines Ray-Ban's looks with a few clever additions. They have open-ear audio with Bluetooth phone calls and music playback, hands-free picture and video taking, and a wide range of frame shape, size, and color options.
