2026 Outlook: Will AI Glasses Bring Fandom Into Physical Space?

A smartphone is a screen you hold in your hand and look at. AI glasses overlay information on your field of view, let you ask questions by voice and work with a camera and location data. For oshi-katsu, they are a tool that lets you receive the background of a work or a person on the spot when you visit in person.

However, putting on glasses doesn't automatically make things fun. You first need an experience design that decides what to show, when and to whom.

The starting point for adoption is not "what can the new device do?" but where fans struggle on site: missing the view while looking for a signboard, being unable to find explanations in other languages, not knowing the route in a crowd. Pick one concrete inconvenience and check whether the glasses solve it more naturally than wearing nothing would.

The flow from putting them on to finishing is part of the experience too. If you can't briefly explain how to borrow them, how to use them with your own glasses, the volume, returning them and deleting data, tension arises before you even get to the effects. Reassurance that you can take them off without hesitation, ahead of any futuristic feel, is a condition for adoption.

People talk about a fit with oshi-katsu because this tool can "overlay information on the thing you are looking at." At a venue or in a town, you don't have to keep switching screens in your hand.

For now, much of what it can do can also be done with a smartphone. Whether it replaces the phone depends on how much value there is in not needing your hands.

When reading predictions, it helps to separate features already available, uses under trial and ideas for the future. Even if information can be overlaid at a venue, whether you can actually use it depends not only on the device but also on the network environment and the organizer's filming rules.

At a pilgrimage site, they can display explanations of buildings and scenery, scenes from the work and local guidance in your view. At a live show, you can imagine lyric subtitles, performers' positions and information that fills in a distant stage. The advantage is that you can keep looking at the place in front of you instead of dropping your gaze to a phone.

Don't show information all the time; call it up only when the fan asks. The ideal is that real-world emotion is the star and the AI is a modest guide.

At a pilgrimage site, for example, show only the title of the work and the scene at first, and let people call up a detailed explanation with their gaze or voice. At a live show, place subtitles where they don't cover the staging, and reduce the display during blackouts and key moments. Adjusting the priority of information to time and place keeps convenience from stealing immersion.

Similar products have come out before. They didn't spread less because of their performance than because they never found a scene to be used in.

Oshi-katsu could be a candidate for that scene. It's more realistic to start with limited uses rather than every moment of daily life.

Technology that overlays information on your view has been studied for a long time. What has stood in the way of practical use is social acceptance rather than performance.

Not knowing whether you are being filmed creates strong unease. The wearer's convenience and the peace of mind of the people around them need to be designed separately.

At the same place, first-time visitors want basic information while longtime fans want detailed behind-the-scenes stories. AI glasses can adapt how they answer questions and how deep the display goes to a fan's preferences. With multilingual subtitles, they can also open a door for fans from overseas.

The more personalization advances, the more important it is that the AI doesn't pretend to know what it doesn't. Display official information and speculation separately. Misinformation damages trust in both the work and its fans.

Personalization settings need more than your oshi's name. Subtitle size, the speed of voice guidance, how much information is shown and staging you dislike should all be adjustable by the person. Treat preferences not as guessed and fixed but as initial settings that can be changed at any time, and accessibility and enjoyment can be supported on the same screen.

When AI produces commentary, the display should let people tell apart content based on official records, guidance from the venue's operators and suggestions from the AI. If it also shows a contact point for corrections and the update date, fans who notice errors can report them safely. Knowledgeable fans' expertise should not be used as training material without permission, and if their cooperation is requested, the purpose and handling should be made clear.

Pairing it with pilgrimage is an easy use to grasp. If you can overlay a scene from the work on the landscape in front of you, there's less searching to do.

Use at live venues raises a different problem. If you wear them where filming is prohibited, suspicion is unavoidable.

With camera-equipped glasses, people nearby can't easily tell whether they are being filmed. If location and gaze data are saved, they also become a personal record of what someone looked at and where. For fans to use the glasses with peace of mind, they need indicator lights, a way to stop filming and an explanation of what is stored.

Fans' passion for their oshi must not be used only for ad targeting. We'd like it to be standard that fans can choose whom to show their data to and in which situations not to.

Gaze and location histories reveal not only hobbies but also movements and companions. Separate the processing needed for the experience from the processing used for improvement analysis or advertising, and obtain separate consent for the latter. Keep the storage period short and let people check and delete their data after leaving the venue, and you avoid an arrangement where "once you agree, everything can be used."

Venues are also expected to prepare, with their staff, for areas where filming is not allowed, scenes where other visitors may be captured and how to remove the glasses in an emergency. Beyond terms for users, putting someone in charge who can stop things on site acts as a breakwater that keeps technical trouble from becoming a threat to people's safety.

Price is also a condition for adoption. If it doesn't come within a range of a few tens of thousands of yen, only a limited number of people will try it.

Wearing time matters too. If the weight and shape don't allow long wear, it won't become an everyday tool.

If AI glasses spread, event venues, pilgrimage sites, shops and stadiums will become stages for receiving information about a work. Rather than showing every visitor the same presentation, they leave room for fans to make discoveries at their own pace.

For businesses, a system that lets people share memories after a visit gives them a reason to come back. Creating a cycle that takes the value of the place into the digital world and brings people back to the place again is the essence of spatial oshi-katsu.

As a record to take home, it is more useful to organize the scenes the person chose, the chapters of the story they walked and the places they want to visit next than to save everything they saw. If they can choose on the spot whom to share with and how widely to publish, they can keep memories while protecting companions' privacy. Invitations to return should also go only to those who ask, rather than tracking past behavior without permission.

If it is used as an oshi-katsu tool, recording will probably be the central feature. Being able to keep the scenery you saw exactly as it was is hugely valuable.

But that is also the feature that needs the most careful handling.

Privacy problems arise whatever the wearer intends. Even if you aren't filming, the fact that you could be becomes the problem.

Even if an indicator showing recording were made mandatory, whether people believe it is another matter. Technical solutions alone won't make the unease go away.

Offering people who don't use the new device another way to enjoy the story of the same place makes for a fair spatial experience.

Spatial oshi-katsu with AI glasses is not a story about replacing the smartphone. It is a new tool for overlaying only the story you need while you look at a real place, so fans can make their own memories. Alongside the speed of the technology, we need to grow designs that let people take the glasses off with peace of mind.

Tools for oshi-katsu have always been born from need. The technology doesn't come first; what people want to do does.

Whether that order holds will decide whether this tool takes root.

For now, expectations are running ahead. Judgment will settle once there are more situations where it is actually used.

If it does spread, it will probably start from specific situations. It will take root not by replacing everything but as a tool for a limited set of uses.