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With more than 7m pairs reportedly sold in 2025, Meta’s Ray-Ban smartglasses are fast becoming one of the world’s most popular gadgets.
While supporters say they are transforming photography and accessibility, critics have raised concerns about nonconsensual filming, privacy and data collection.
We spoke to users, and people who refuse to wear them, about the impact the glasses have had.
Based in The Hague in the Netherlands, Servaas wears his Meta glasses every day. He bought them for the built-in camera rather than the AI features and uses them to photograph and film walks and bike rides. “It’s an immersive experience,” he says. “I love everything tech and have done my whole life.”
He says the discreet camera means most people don’t realise he is wearing smartglasses, although he was once stopped by security at an event held in a government building because staff feared he might be recording. “For some reason, security didn’t understand. They were very scared of them [the glasses]. People said I should have expected that but I didn’t agree with them because it’s not like I’m spying.”
Despite allegations that Meta workers in Kenya viewed private footage recorded on the glasses, Servaas was not put off by the scandal. “I know Meta loves your data [but] I’m not worried about my privacy because I’ve only used them to record outside.”
‘A real gamechanger’
For others, however, the glasses offer far more than convenience. Nikki, 59, from Devon in the UK, has been blind since birth owing to an inherited retinal disease and describes the glasses, which she received as a Christmas present in 2024, as “a real gamechanger”.
“I live in quite a rural location,” she says. “I could hear something going on ahead of me as I was walking down to the village shop. I said: ‘Hey Meta, look and tell me what’s in front of me.’ It told me there was a van unloading scaffolding. It’s things like that that I find absolutely amazing.”
While she understands concerns about privacy, Nikki worries public criticism could make the technology less accessible for people who genuinely rely on it. “What about dashcams? What about camera doorbells? What about action cameras like GoPros? People don’t complain about them,” she says. “I kind of worry that if people start going on about privacy and safety, it will be harder for those of us who genuinely benefit from the glasses.”
‘The caption feature just doesn’t work’
Yet the accessibility features have not transformed everyone’s experience. Karen Walter, 84, from San Diego, who has been living with severe hearing loss for more than 20 years, bought the glasses solely for their live-caption feature.
“Even with state-of-the-art hearing aids, I have a great deal of difficulty understanding what people are saying unless the person is very close to me and speaking directly to me,” she says. “I expected [the glasses] would be a great help in noisy environments and when I was trying to keep up with conversations involving more than two people.”
The live captions worked well during a demonstration in a quiet Best Buy store, she says, when she was “with one staffer who was directly in front of me, about two feet away”. However, she says they failed to perform in the situations for which she had bought them: “I have tried the glasses when in a group of three up to a group of seven and the caption feature just doesn’t work. There were too many people talking and too much surrounding noise.”
‘They’ve made me much more wary in public’
Not everyone is convinced the technology belongs in everyday life at all. Kiki, from the West Midlands in the UK, says she finds the idea of discreet cameras built into ordinary eyewear “pervasive”, particularly for women and children.
“If you try to take a picture with your phone, at least it’s pretty obvious,” she says. “With the glasses, you have no choice, as the camera is much harder to spot.”
Kiki says seeing people wearing the glasses in public has left her feeling uneasy.
“When someone’s just looking at you through their glasses, it worries me,” she says. “I imagine taking images secretly is far easier [than on phones]. You could just pretend to adjust your hair or cap, and press the button in a passing gesture. I’ve seen people wearing them. I saw someone wearing them in a cafe and just moved away because I felt uncomfortable.”
Although she accepts the technology could have genuine benefits, Kiki says her concern is more about the lack of safeguards. “For accessibility, absolutely,” she says. “But what bothers me is regulations often lag so far behind technology.”
“They have made me much more wary in public,” she says. “I can, however, see that people working in a shop late at night by themselves might feel safer being able to take a picture of someone harassing them.”
‘I just don’t trust it’
Pete, 44, from Northampton, believes the glasses point to a broader problem: AI-powered wearables collecting ever more personal data with too little scrutiny or regulation. “I’m not an old man shaking my fist at the clouds,” he says. “I’ve been onboard with technological advancement all my life, but with AI and Meta glasses, I’m drawing the line.”
He is more concerned about where the data ends up than covert filming. “I don’t know who’s getting the pictures at the end and what they’re doing with them,” he says. “Whether they’re not doing anything or they’re selling it to someone, and then what those people are doing with it.”
While Pete acknowledges the glasses could be transformative for blind people and other disabled users, he believes stronger safeguards are needed before they become commonplace. “I would like things like this to be of benefit to us,” he says. “I just don’t trust it.”
