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SINGAPORE (June 27): Brilliant Labs, the designer of an AI-powered mixed-reality gadget, has pulled in investors including Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe, Siri co-founder Adam Cheyer, and Eric Migicovsky, the founder of Pebble, for its seed round.

The startup’s only product is a monocle-like device that retails for about a tenth of the price of Apple Inc’s Vision Pro headset but operates in the same sphere — augmenting a view of the real world with additional information and functionality. The US$3 million round will help the company bring its second wearable to the market, it said in a statement on Tuesday.

Singapore-based Brilliant is another example of how startups across the world are rushing to leverage generative artificial intelligence after OpenAI’s ChatGPT debuted to a media firestorm in November.

The US$349 device, a pocket-sized lens designed to clip onto reading glasses, has a ChatGPT extension built in, allowing users to ask it questions, build applications, read text and record video. It has one hour’s battery life and a charging case that carries six charges. Called the Monocle, it has been on sale since February and is a rudimentary tool that chief executive officer Bobak Tavangar says can help users with their daily tasks.

When dealing with a flat tire, for example, it can help a driver call for help, choose the right tools, take photos, and follow step-by-step instructions on how to swap it out. The company is looking for developers to build additional functionality for the product. It’s described as a rapid prototyping tool for anyone looking to build AR applications — which Apple’s incoming Vision Pro has sparked renewed interest in.

“Open-sourced devices that interface with cloud-based AI — that’s like your intelligent passport to the world around you,” said CEO and co-founder Tavangar in an interview in Singapore.

“We don’t think you need to spend billions and an army of humans building out an over-engineered device.”

The firm is venturing into a space that has yet to produce a big winner: Alphabet Inc’s Google Glass and Snap Inc’s funky Spectacles are the biggest highlights from an AR boom that failed to sustain momentum years ago.

“When it comes to how we interact with each other in the digital world, it’s a bit of a mess,” said Tavangar, who used to work at Apple. “We will never have a business model that sells the customer’s intimate data to someone else.”

Founded in 2019 by Raj Nakarja, Ben Heald and Tavangar, Brilliant Labs is working on a thinner, lighter device that looks like a pair of regular glasses and will be available in a few months, said Tavangar.

In the US, a group of Stanford students have developed an application for the device named RizzGPT, using GPT-4 and Whisper to generate responses that help users flirt and ace interviews.

“Brilliant Labs will always make devices that help people be more productive,” said Tavangar. “And I think AI will play a more important role in that.”