A programmer designs a genuine real-world ad-blocker using Snapchat's AR smart glasses, yet manages to generate something even more disconcerting than advertisements instead.
I freaking despise those Google AI summaries! They're like a thorn in my side, plastered right at the top of the page, filled with answers that are more prone to hallucinating than a brain-damaged psychopath. And when it does manage to offer something vaguely helpful, it's usually a lazy, low-effort scraping from another human who actually did the legwork. But hey, thanks to the Bye Bye, Google AI browser extension, I no longer have to suffer through them. If only I could do the same for other annoyances, like advertisements on bus stop ads and marketing billboards in real life.
Technology whiz kid Stijn Spanhove is working on that very goal. Right now, he's dabbling with an AR project that brings ad-blocking power to the hassle-free, lightweight frame of a wearable. He's using Snapchat's Spectacles and Google's Gemini AI for the job, as reported by Tom's Hardware. The kink in this exciting setup is that, since it's still an experimental project, advertisements are currently being replaced by glaring red boxes.
Take a gander at the demo video Spanhove shared on X, though, and you'll see why it's worth the wait. The app's positional consistency is impressive, effectively "blocking" out billboards, newspaper ads, and even branded food packaging once activated. This is all thanks to the use of Snap's Depth Cache library shared via GitHub, but this also makes the project exclusive to Snap's AR Spectacles for the time being.
Apart from the Snap exclusivity, the biggest hurdles in my opinion are those screaming red boxes that are arguably more annoying than the ads themselves. Maybe clever developer Stijn Spanhove will add the option for users to replace ads with their own custom content, like an AR mural of Miku Hatsune…provided that's not too much to ask, hypothetically speaking.
More broadly, the wearables world is teeming with ambitious attempts to make smart specs happen, despite even Meta admitting earlier this year they haven't found a killer use case yet for their in-development Orion AR glasses. Meta, by the way, has made me hostile towards the tech wearables fad after they confessed that anything you snap or record with their Ray-Ban smart glasses could be used to train AI models.
Enough doom and gloom about wearables, though! Let's shift gears to the brighter side of the tech world. Here are the top gaming picks of the week:
- Best overall: HP Omen 35L
- Best budget: Lenovo Legion Tower 5i
- Best compact: Velocity Micro Raptor ES40
- Alienware: Alienware Aurora
- Best mini PC: Minisforum AtomMan G7 PT
For the latest gaming news, reviews, and the best deals, follow us here at PC Gamer.
Jess Kinghorn (She/Her)I've been writing about games for over a decade, spending the past seven years working on print publications like PLAY and Official PlayStation Magazine. When I'm not geeking out about hardware here, I'm immersed in horror classics, ranting about obscure indie hits, or experimenting with tabletop nonsense.
- Stijn Spanhove, a technology whiz kid, is working on a project that aims to block advertisements using augmented reality (AR) technology, currently being tested with Snapchat's Spectacles and Google's Gemini AI.
- The AR project, in its experimental stage, replaces advertisements with glaring red boxes, but a demovideo showcases the positional consistency that effectively blocks out billboards, newspaper ads, and branded food packaging once activated.
- Although the project is exclusive to Snap's AR Spectacles for the time being, optimistic expectations are high for the app's potential future features, such as the ability to replace ads with custom content.
- Furthermore, the wearables industry is seeing an increasing number of ambitious attempts to create smart specs, despite challenges and uncertainties, such as the scrutiny over privacy concerns with devices like Meta's in-development Orion AR glasses.
