When Meta launched its AI-powered smart glasses in 2023 with trendy sunglasses brand Ray-Ban, it unleashed a storm of controversy. There were multiple reports of the devices being used to harass women and girls in particular - filming them without consent, then sharing the footage. So, you know, the usual tech-utopia stuff.
The image problem wasn't cured by Meta enlisting Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian's sister, as prime model this summer. The devices have been dubbed "pervert" or "creepy" glasses. In the UK, JD Wetherspoon pubs, a handful of major theatres, Comic-Con, some schools, and Faslane - home of the UK's nuclear submarines - have all banned them. Because nothing says "fashion-forward" like being outlawed at a submarine base.
On Thursday, Meta is unveiling a new version with no camera at all, called Ray-Ban Meta Audio. They'll have the audio functions of the original - phone calls, music, sound funnelled directly into your ear - but with fewer implications for privacy. To some in the industry, it looks like an interesting pivot, perhaps a response to the backlash. Meta denies the glasses were rushed out in response to public anger, saying the product has been in development for two years. The audio-only version is cheaper than its camera-enabled cousins, with a lighter frame and better battery life.
When I put it to Meta Glasses' head of product Ankit Brahmbhatt that I thought they might overtake the original camera-enabled glasses in sales, there was a pregnant pause. "We have, I think, something for everyone," he said, choosing his words very carefully. So, definitely not a pivot, then.
Does the release of a camera-free option represent a shift in how tech companies see the future of smart glasses? Or is it a niche side-product, like internet-disabled "brick" phones for people tired of social media?
There's no doubt smart glasses have become controversial. I was lent a pair of Meta Ray-Bans - with cameras - to try. I was initially nervous about wearing them in public, in case someone got physical: I've heard of people knocking them off wearers' heads and smashing them. The reality: I wore them on public transport and on foot in London, Glasgow, and Portsmouth, and nobody batted an eyelid. It made me wonder whether awareness is really as high as Meta and anti-glasses campaigners believe. That said, some people quietly told me they wouldn't be confident enough to approach someone wearing them, for fear of being filmed and uploaded.
The glasses work as an extension of your phone, using Bluetooth to sync via Meta's AI app. They're voice-activated, with open speakers in the arms funnelling sound into your ears - like headphones without noise-cancelling, so you can still hear the world. My potentially cancellable opinion: many features were useful. Interestingly, none involved the camera. Listening to music and podcasts without earbuds felt safer. I felt more confident avoiding e-bike-riding phone thieves in central London without my phone in hand. And as someone with a pitiful sense of direction, spoken map directions were handy. The pay-off? Accepting that the Meta AI app knows exactly where I am at all times. Meta is notorious for its hunger for personal data.
When I posted about using the Meta Ray-Bans on social media, I got a hard time. Less so in everyday life. My hairdresser loved the idea of recording clients' hair transformations. A builder at the gym reckoned they'd be useful on sites for accident evidence or teaching new skills. My friend who runs said he'd wear them on a jog. Plenty of content creators are fans. My son borrowed them to wash my car and was proud of his film showing how he delicately chipped away at bird poo without damaging the paintwork (I was pleased, and happy to take his word for it).
More broadly, smart glasses have been welcomed by the blind community. One user described them to the BBC as a "game-changer" because they give audio descriptions of locations and read out visible text like restaurant menu options. Earlier this year, Meta donated 15,000 pairs to a charity for the blind in Ireland.
The glasses have a blinking white LED that switches on when the camera is active, but a whole industry has sprung up around technical workarounds to disable that light, some involving taking the glasses apart. Meta says less than 0.1% of the frames it has sold worldwide have been physically tampered with. Exact sales figures are unknown, but Ray-Ban's parent company EssilorLuxottica reported selling seven million last year.
Liz Hunter, a tech founder and parent who set up a petition calling for urgent new regulation, is furious. "They should never, ever have left the lab at Meta," she told me. "It's a real travesty of public trust, and of women's equality, and it's rolled back our privacy rights right before our very eyes." Hunter thinks smart glasses should remain available for blind people, but not for the general population. "We don't need them, we don't want them," she says.
A Polish developer has released an app called ZuckOff which uses Bluetooth to identify nearby smart glasses. It's been downloaded thousands of times, reports Wired. Ben Wood from tech research firm CCS Insight remembers first reading "pervert glasses" in the usually strait-laced Financial Times - a sign of a "significant public backlash."
The furore hasn't deterred other companies. Samsung is reported to be working with upmarket glasses brand Warby Parker. Google is also said to be working on a set. Snap, behind Snapchat, just launched Specs, retailing in the US for $2,195 (and £1,995 in the UK). Users can see data inside the glass and snap their fingers to take a photo. Snap founder Evan Spiegel thinks smart glasses will eventually replace phones, and he's not alone.
When Meta launched smart glasses in 2021, they were geared around what the user could see. The firm promised they'd allow users to "easily record the world as you see it" and "capture life's moments as they happen from a unique first-person perspective." So Meta's latest announcement - glasses without a camera - is notable.
Janusz Swierczynski, a researcher at Oxford University's Saïd Business School who is worried about smart glasses, says the camera-free version is a "positive sign" that Meta listened to privacy concerns. "They're thinking about it and they're responding," he says, though it's "not a perfect" response because camera-enabled glasses are still on the market.
Others are less sure. "It's certainly not the end of cameras in glasses," says Wood from CCS Insight. He thinks smart glasses are largely about capturing information; they collect as much data as they can and use AI to tell you about it. Glasses armed with a camera - trained on whatever you can see - are an "extremely good" source. "That is an invaluable data stream to an AI platform, which can then interpret that data and provide you with the best possible information related to it," Wood says. "So having the vision parts of it with the cameras is a key pillar for getting the best experience." He imagines Meta has been working on the camera-free glasses for several years, and the backlash provides "fantastic timing" for their release.
Indeed, Meta shows no signs of slowing down camera-enabled glasses. The company is bringing its third generation to the UK next month. These can visually display data inside the lenses. (As a live broadcast journalist who has talked openly about brain fog, I can see the appeal of glasses that discreetly display a script.)
Kate Winick, a tech analyst at Forrester, says it's not a step back but a "half step to the side, where they give users time to get comfortable with the technology… so that users themselves start to say, 'Oh, this would be so much more useful if it had a camera'." Paradoxically, she says, camera-free glasses might help "take the heat" off people wearing camera-enabled ones. "It's now clear that out in the market some glasses have cameras and some don't," she says. "You can't automatically get mad at everybody wearing Meta's glasses, because you may not know whether or not they have a camera."
Other companies are addressing privacy concerns without ditching the camera. Taiwanese firm HTC recently launched Vive Eagle glasses, costing less than a quarter of Snap's. Thomas Dexmier, a vice president at HTC Vive, says if anyone near a wearer says "stop filming" or "stop recording" and it's picked up by one of the four microphones, the camera deactivates. All recordings are encrypted, and the firm itself cannot see them - though this also means HTC cannot flag harmful content. "We acknowledge that there are some challenges, potentially becoming a real problem, especially for women," he said. He said HTC Vive was working to make misuse as difficult as possible but said it was "too early to comment" on a camera-free version.
Ultimately, Wood thinks camera-enabled glasses are "not going away." He compares it to the 2000s, when some said mobile phone companies couldn't install cameras due to privacy concerns. "There's an inevitability there," he says. "We will have to find a societal norm, a framework for the use of these products."
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