Is Oprah Right About the Appeal of Meta’s Smart Glasses?

Following Google Glass’ widely covered failure, Meta has a hit with Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, including landing a spot on Oprah Winfrey’s holiday gift guide this year.

“The gift of the season!” Winfrey exclaimed on OprahDaily.com. “I’ll be giving these to lots of folks this year. Ray-Ban and Meta’s newest glasses can tell you what you’re looking at in a new city, translate a menu from a foreign language, play music, snap photos, take a phone call, and more. The traveler, the techie, and the trendsetter will dive right in.”

Ray-Ban Meta glasses are basically ordinary glasses that come with a camera, speaker, and voice-command capabilities powered by AI, essentially avoiding the hassle of doing the same tasks with a mobile phone.

Meta proclaimed in a recent blog post, “Available in Wayfarer, Skyler, and Headliner frames in a range of color and lens options, Ray-Ban Meta glasses let you live in the moment and share it, hands-free. Be fully present while taking, sharing, and saving high-quality photos and videos. Take a voice or video call on the go so you can connect with your people without disconnecting from your world. Share your point of view by livestreaming to Facebook and Instagram. Play your favorite mix or listen to podcasts without losing the ambient sounds of your surroundings. And use your voice to interact with Meta AI, your smart assistant that can help you learn something new, create captions, and translate text on the fly.”

The generally positive reviews (well beyond Oprah) reflect a big shift in public opinion around smart glasses after the arrival of Google Glass ignited privacy concerns. Google’s eyewear was particularly called out for being able to surreptitiously record people, whether with video or audio, with wearers identified as “glassholes” for recording without permission. Other privacy and ethics concerns raised included being able to identify strangers in public using facial recognition.

The Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses come at a friendlier price — $299 for standard lenses, $329 for polarized lenses, and $379 for transition lenses that automatically darken in sunlight — versus the more tech-advanced Google Glass’ price tag that started at $1,500.

Another difference is Meta’s glasses have a more subtle design, which embraces the streetwear style of Ray-Ban compared to Google Glass’ robotic design. Prakhar Khanna wrote for ZDNET, “When you look at Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, they look and feel like sunglasses instead of a gadget. That subtlety is a standout feature for me.”

Some also feel people nearly expect to be recorded nowadays in an increasingly Instagramable world. Philip Berne wrote in a column for TechRadar, “Soon, everyone will wear a camera on their face everywhere. So what? We’re used to it. In fact, smart glasses are going to be more polite, because I’ll have a shining light that lets you know I’m recording.”

Meta’s success is reportedly encouraging others, including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and Samsung, to reinvest in the smart glass opportunity.

Also writing for TechRadar, Eric Hal Schwartz recently heralded that 2025 “will be the year of the AI smart glasses.” He wrote, “Unlike Google Glass, modern smart glasses are designed around easy access while not being distracting to people around you. Meta’s partnership with Ray-Ban, for example, offers a device that can take photos and videos, link you to the Meta AI assistant, and still look like stylish frames. Throw in features like real-time translation and health metrics, as showcased in the Solos AirGo 3 Smart Glasses, and the blending of eyewear and AI makes a lot of sense.”

Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses recently received some negative press, however, after reports arrived that two Harvard students created a program for the smart glasses that enabled them to identify strangers in real-time, including their names and addresses.

After news came about about this program, Meta shared a statement with the New York Post: “Ray-Ban Meta glasses do not have facial recognition technology. From what we can see, these students are simply using publicly available facial recognition software on a computer that would work with photos taken on any camera, phone or recording device.”

The company continued, “Unlike most other devices, Ray-Ban Meta glasses have an LED light that indicates to others that the user is recording. This LED cannot be disabled by the user, and we introduced tamper detection technology to prevent users from covering up the capture LED.”

According to the two students, they don’t plan to release the program, which they claimed they developed to “highlight [the] significant privacy concerns” associated with the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses.