A review of Meta's new smartglasses, featuring a voice assistant voiced by Judi Dench. The article explores the potential benefits and drawbacks of these wearable devices, questioning their role in the future of computing and their impact on privacy and social acceptance. Concerns about the camera and overall desirability of the device are also expressed.
Content creators love the built-in camera; sceptics call them ‘pervert glasses’. Do we really need any more hi-tech wearables, even with a voice assistant that sounds like Judi Dench? ately, I’ve been hearing Judi Dench’s voice in my head.
She tells me tomorrow’s forecast, when to turn right, that there’s been another message in my group chat. Day or night, Dame Judi is eager to assist. When I ask the eight-time Academy Award nominee what I’m looking at, she answers: a residential area, a person in a pub, daffodils. “They are a bright yellow colour and are often associated with spring.” This isn’t a delusion. This is, apparently, progress. I am test-driving Meta’s smartglasses and Dench voices its integrated AI assistant: “Here to chat, answer questions, create images and provide advice and inspiration,” said “Judi” when I selected her over the actors John Cena and Kristen Bell. “Shall we begin?” Over the next decade, predicts the Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, smartglasses will gradually become “the main way we do computing”, fulfilling many of the same functions as smartphones – taking photos, playing music, making calls, giving directions. For people who wear glasses, Zuckerberg, the upgrade is a no-brainer, bundling more features into an essential accessory. And for those of us who don’t, it is only a matter of time. In 2025, Meta Are they really the future, bringing us the benefits of tech without the tyranny of screens, or will they trap us deeper in the digital world? To see for myself, I wore a pair for a month. The most common response to my new frames is: “Why?” I don’t usually wear glasses, and these clear-lens Wayfarers are on the heavy side. I look like the nerdy girl in a 90s romcom, or the old guy from Up, but the sunglasses would have made me even more conspicuous if worn indoors. The other question I get asked is: “Are you filming me?” In general, I find people do not like being around someone wearing Meta glasses, not least because sometimes the answer is: “Yes.”When I arrive home, my boyfriend, Marco, clocks me wearing them, then instantly freezes, as though he has unexpectedly come face to face with a predator. Although they are still fringe tech, concerns about privacy are mounting, amidfrom the glasses, including of people using the toilet and having sex. That’s not to mention the company’s Meta’s newer Display glasses have tiny screens embedded in the lenses for displaying text messages, maps and the like, but they cost $799 and are not yet available outside the US. My entry-level Gen 1 Wayfarers, which retail for £299, aren’t as functional as a smartphone.and augmented reality. Meta is certainly betting big on them, expanding its partnership with the eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica and heavily investing in its Meta AI. The pitch is that smartglasses remove friction between our physical and digital worlds, enabling the wearer to be more present “in the moment, with your head up and your hands free”, as Alex Himel, Meta’s vice-president of wearables, A Meta spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the company foresaw smartglasses being increasingly used alongside smartphones, not replacing them. Eventually, they will have more specific, unique functions, the spokesperson said, but for now they aim to be less distracting and more convenient than taking your phone out of your pocket. Wearing a camera does encourage me to take more photos while out with friends, but, when I later download them on to my phone, most of them are unfocused and awkwardly framed. It’s not easy, composing an image with your eyes. I get more use out of the glasses as headphones. They pipe audio directly into your ear without blocking ambient sound; only someone standing very close to you could tell that music was playing. It’s nifty tech, but the trade-off is continual interruptions. Headphones signal to others that you are not listening; glasses don’t. I am self-conscious while taking calls in public, apparently talking to myself. So far, so nonessential. Smartglasses’ real promise lies in the integrated AI: what Meta is hailing as “the most natural and seamless way to access an AI assistant in your daily life”. Judi can operate my phone via voice commands , answer questions and engage with what I can see – for example, by reading aloud printed text or identifying objects. Blind people and those with low vision have reported this as transformative. Using thefeature, they can even connect with a sighted volunteer, who then “looks through” their glasses’ camera and gives live feedback. It is easy to see smartglasses’ potential as assistive technology; they are already being used to help. My experience is similarly haphazard. Judi frequently mishears me, cuts out midway through answering my questions or reads aloud only some new texts in a chain, meaning I don’t feel confident giving her tasks without then checking them on my phone – defeating the point of “hands-free” tech. The AI assistance is also limited. Judi can distinguish daffodils from daisies and confirm when I am in a pub , but she struggles with even slightly more involved requests. When I ask her to ID a friend’s hat, for example, Judi says she can’t yet help “with requests about product pricing or availability”. At Tate Modern, when I ask her to tell me about the artwork I’m looking at, Judi describes “a bed with white bedding and a blue mat underneath it various items scattered”. It’s notOf all the glasses’ selling points, I’d been most enthusiastic about the real-time translation, imagining it smoothing my interactions abroad and allowing me to eavesdrop on Marco, a native Italian speaker. If Marco was initially wary of the glasses, after two weeks he is sick of the sight of them, but indulges my request to role-play tourist and local.”, looking directly at him, as instructed, with the Meta AI app open on my phone. Marco rattles off a response with authentic speed and dismissiveness. An English translation appears on my phone’s screen, after a slight lag, but it is incomprehensible. The interaction is significantly less fluid than typing into Google Translate and passing the phone back and forth. This is frequently the case in my month of Meta glasses: instead of a more seamless experience, they add another layer of tech, one that’s more fiendish to navigate. There’s a reason smartglasses are not all that popular, suggests Iain Rice, a professor of industrial AI at Birmingham City University. As the technology evolves and improves, they may become standard for certain activities, but at present they conspicuously lack clear, valuable “use cases”. His take is that Meta wants to be seen as innovating alongside Google and Apple, but lacks the vision and business acumen to come up with genuinely essential tech. Rice points to theafter $80bn in investment. Meta’s glasses could prove similarly misjudged, he thinks. Most people don’t want to wear glasses if they don’t need to, Rice points out – which is partly why Google Glass failed 10 years ago. “Meta has spent time trying to make them well designed and trendy … but they didn’t seem to have the market research at the forefront: do people actually want this? Will they buy into it? Or is the tech just not there?” It’s no surprise that take-up seems to have been highest among content creators, perpetually in need of more footage and fresh angles on their day-to-day lives. More specifically, Meta glasses havewith pick-up artists, social-media pranksters and other public irritants. It has become increasingly common online to see footage shot with glasses, showing the wearer’s point of view, although the person featured may not have consented to being recorded or even been aware.A blinking LED on the frame alerts others that recording is in progress , but workarounds are widely shared online. Even as is, the light is easy to miss, especially in bright light. To test this, on the tube home one evening, I guiltily snap a picture of the people across from me. No one notices, absorbed in their own devices. They might have twigged had I angled my phone in that now familiar cagey way, but people don’t yet think to check glasses for a light or a camera. The number of content creators, and worse, capitalising on this, plus the absence of other obvious uses, has earned Meta glasses thelike a creep. When I see a stranger walking her lookalike dog, and when I run into an ex for the first time in years, both times I have the fleeting thought: I wish I’d been recording. I’m perturbed by how quickly my initial discomfort passes and the glasses become second nature. Just having a covert camera makes me want to use it, the possibilities of the tech overriding my better judgment and even basic decency. The Meta spokesperson told me that, as outlined in the terms of service, the user is responsible for using them lawfully and “in a safe, respectful manner”: “As with any recording device, people shouldn’t use them for engaging in harmful activities like harassment, infringing on privacy rights or capturing sensitive information.” The trouble is, as emerging tech, smartglasses complicate what we consider harassment, privacy and sensitive information. Some users, for example, argue that being able to film makes them feel safer, while others feel threatened by their presence. With no laws against recording in public places in the UK, whose rights take precedence: those who want to wear smartglasses or those who don’t want to be perceived by them?This comes to a head for me on a solo Sunday-morning jaunt to Ikea. Realising I don’t have to suffer alone, I use the glasses to place my first video call, to Marco. At first, it’s all fun and games, showing him the Swedish snacks and soft toys. Then he tries to order me to fling some around and have a weird interaction with an employee. “Why?” I ask, pointing out that neither of us are typically disruptive in public. Marco apologises, blaming force of habit: the first-person point of view reminds him of playing a video game. No other shoppers seem to notice me talking to myself, but the knowledge that I am broadcasting without their knowledge is genuinely queasy-making. When a small child crosses my path, I instinctively, immediately whip my head towards the shelves with a sinking feeling. I cannot fathom what sort of person would be untroubled by doing this or, worse, feel entitled to do it. After that, I never make another video call and stop dismissing Meta glasses as a gimmick. Even in their present shonky state, Rice agrees, they are shaping up as a flashpoint in a bigger, existential discussion about just how much integration we want with tech. “They’re pervading slowly into society … If you see a person wearing them and don’t want to be recorded, unfortunately, the only way to make sure is by moving out of the way.” Nonconsensual and covert filming are only the tip of the iceberg, he says. For Meta, smartglasses are a way to gather masses of data on individual users and whatever – or whomever – they’re seeing. Some media and interactions captured on Meta glasses could be used to train its AI. “If you knew what was being done with all the imagery after you’d recorded it, I don’t think you’d be doing it the way you are,” Rice says. Meta could make changes to protect bystanders’ privacy, he suggests, such as blurring and removing unapproved faces at the preprocessing stage. His concern is that, as the tech gets cheaper and better, all glasses will be made smartglasses, just as Bluetooth became the norm. “I think they’ve released a technology that the world wasn’t ready for, and definitely hasn’t regulated for, so there has to be some ownership.” In the meantime, he says, we should feel confident pushing back: by asking friends wearing Meta glasses to take them off around us; and strangers we suspect of filming us to stop. What would Rice say to someone who was thinking about getting a pair? “I’d say: I don’t think you should.” After a month, I’m glad to return the glasses to the office. I’m sick of seeing friends’ faces fall at the sight of me, of feeling trapped inside the computer, of hearing Judi say I’ve got a new text. Before I wipe the device’s memory, I alert Judi to my intentions and ask if she has any last words. “Thanks for letting me know,” she says.
Smartglasses Meta Wearable Technology Artificial Intelligence Privacy
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