I tried Meta’s camera-free Ray-Ban Audio glasses at Meta Connect, one of just many new designs coming.
I talked to “Henry,” a Muse agent in my AI glasses, as I stared at a box of Kind bars. Henry was trained as if it were the assistant to a 38-year-old bodybuilding marketing executive. Henry told me whether I should eat Kind bars and also helped me plan my workout schedule.
that’s already on phones and Macs, but this time it was on Meta’s AI glasses. If you were concerned about AI on what many people are calling “pervert glasses” before, they’re about to get supercharged very soon.
But I also tried on a camera-free pair of Meta glasses that gave me audio assistance, meaning privacy-invading, pervy images aren’t an issue.
This was at Meta’s Connect developer conference this week, where the focus was on AI,
and where Meta fired out a whole bunch of updates and many new designs. It was also getting a jump on the launch of
Some of Meta’s new glasses designs come with better battery life, some with added hearing assistance, and some, made by Thai rap star and actor Lisa, come with collectible charms. But amid all of this, there was very little about fundamental changes that would address the privacy concerns and fears surrounding a wearable category that so many companies are diving into.
Every time I wear or talk about smart glasses, people increasingly give me side eye. This has been a
for global opinions on AI-enabled and camera-equipped glasses, a category in which Meta is a leader. But with Google, Samsung and a ton of others –
– expected to enter the fray next year, it’s going to get crowded and weird fast. Meta’s answer to all of this: more glasses, more features, including literally getting in our faces with its new agentic AI tool, Muse.
There is a new FDA-cleared hearing enhancement mode in Meta’s glasses that I tried, which costs $149 to activate. There are new Meta Ray-Ban Gen 3 glasses with slightly better battery life, and camera-free Meta Ray-Ban Audio glasses with even better battery life (up to 12 hours).
Muse could be the biggest news of all, especially as Meta goes head-to-head against
wearables. But I was also surprised that no new fitness features were announced after Meta’s push into the space with
last year, and Meta’s prescription-challenged Ray-Ban Displays, while becoming available to order in more countries, have barely changed at all.
So, let’s break it all down. I’m still trying to digest it myself.
I tried Muse on Meta’s glasses at a single demo on Meta’s campus.
that’s been well-received by some early reviewers and in-app downloads since it emerged just a couple of weeks ago. Its appearance on Meta’s glasses now seems inevitable, especially since the faster-responding Muse Spark AI model has given them a performance boost.
The only chance I got to try Muse on glasses was a very quick and pretty canned demo, and the arrival timing for Muse on glasses is still unclear. Also unclear is exactly how capable Muse will truly be or how safe. The agentic AI can already tap into personal accounts of all sorts if you let it, and it can buy things for you or manage your data, but it doesn’t promise encryption or privacy. That’s why I’ve avoided connecting it to anything in my own life, and not all accounts will allow hook-ins:
My Muse glasses demo showed very little of meaningful, deeper agent hooks to data I’d recognize, since it wasn’t my own being accessed. I did notice that Muse took a while to complete some actions when rescheduling workouts for the marketing manager Muse agent Henry was set up to serve. Muse worked over audio, with no sense of progress status for completing a task.
Meta is introducing some privacy updates to how its glasses handle data, promising a new Private Processing system in the future that will run on confidential virtual machines in the cloud, a system that Meta’s using now in WhatsApp and Meta AI but plans to extend to all tools for Meta glasses. It’s not here yet, though, and it doesn’t make me feel any more convinced that any of the systems can be trusted, though, and I certainly feel lots of anxiety about handing over any agentic control of my personal data to any system.
But the space is moving fast. Google Gemini can already handle a lot of agentic actions, and Samsung and Google’s glasses will be able to do them.
, meanwhile, also has increasingly agent-like actions in its connected AI and apps. And
with direct support for its services, too. Everyone in tech seems to want something like Iron Man’s Jarvis for your face, and few actually have it. Meta’s casting its hat in the ring.
Meta’s two Ray-Ban Audio glasses models: Clubmaster (left) and Burbank (right)
One way to avoid pervert glasses concerns? Not having cameras on glasses at all. I tried out the new line of camera-free Meta Ray-Ban Audio glasses, which promise 12-hour battery life (a notable bump from 8 to 9 hours on Meta’s recent glasses). There are just two designs for now: