Even YouTube’s anti-adblock campaign doesn’t stand a chance against this self-made AR app — blocking real-world billboards with Google Gemini AI

Over the past few weeks, Google has doubled down on throttling and preventing playback on YouTube videos for users with ad blockers installed on their devices. At this point, it feels like a cat-and-mouse chase, leaving Google stuck in a "hamster wheel" of chasing down the loopholes users are leveraging to bypass YouTube's ads.

Recently, Belgian software engineer Stijn Spanhove developed an ingenious augmented reality (AR) app designed to identify and block ads in real life, including billboards and product branding (via Tom's Hardware).

For context, the app works on Snap's fifth-generation AR "Spectacles" and leverages Google's Gemini AI to identify and block billboard ads and brands in the real world. As shown in the video above, the smart glasses are demonstrated running the app, blocking ads on billboards, newspapers, and posters.

The app replaces the ads with a red square and the blocked brand’s name. Interestingly, the app also seems to block out ads featured in food packaging. It isn't perfect, but it's close enough to be impressive.

According to Spanhove:

“I’ve been building an XR app for a real-world ad blocker using Snap Spectacles. It uses Gemini to detect and block ads in the environment. It’s still early and experimental, but it’s exciting to imagine a future where you control the physical content you see."

To that end, the app was built from libraries and APIs shared by Snap on GitHub, limiting the ad-free experience to Snap's smart AR glasses. Developers who applied for access through the company's Lens Studio desktop tool can grab the Snap fifth-gen AR Spectacles for $99/month.

While the app's access is fairly limited since it is still in an early development phase, it could, in theory, find its way to Apple's Vision Pro and Meta's Quest. In the viral clip on X (formerly Twitter) post, users have suggested that the developer should replace the bold red rectangle with more natural elements like local foliage, plants, and animals. Imagine that.