📰 Key Highlights

Lorde publicly blasted Meta AI glasses during her performance at Madrid’s Mad Cool Festival, declaring “F*** the glasses, don’t buy them, they’re not sexy at all.” She said it’s getting harder and harder to tell what’s real in today’s world — you can’t even tell if someone is wearing regular sunglasses or smart glasses with built-in cameras and AI features. Her comments are especially striking because the festival’s sponsor, Ray-Ban, is the very brand that partnered with Meta to launch these smart glasses, and the artist who took the stage right after Lorde’s set — Jennie — is the face of Ray-Ban x Meta smart glasses. Lorde isn’t the only one raising privacy concerns; these camera-equipped AI glasses have already been used for harassment and extortion. Meta insists it takes privacy seriously and has safety features like recording indicator lights, but it’s currently facing multiple privacy lawsuits, including one alleging that contract workers in Kenya were forced to watch violent footage recorded by the glasses to help train Meta’s AI models (Meta has not publicly responded to that allegation). Despite the ongoing controversy, sales haven’t been affected at all: eyewear maker EssilorLuxottica reported selling over 7 million pairs of Meta AI glasses in 2025 — more than triple the roughly 2 million pairs sold in 2023 and 2024 combined, an impressive result that has Meta continuing to expand the product line.

💬 JudyAI Lab Take

The lead singer openly dissed Ray-Ban x Meta smart glasses on stage at Madrid’s Mad Cool Festival, calling them “not sexy at all” — and the notable part is that she said it on the sponsor’s own stage.

This reflects a gap the AI hardware industry is grappling with: sales numbers (7M+ units sold in 2025, more than triple the prior two years combined) and user trust are not the same thing. Always-on cameras, the adequacy of recording indicator lights, and controversies like Kenyan content moderators being forced to watch violent clips recorded by the glasses all show that the basic right to know “is someone recording me right now?” is still at the stage of one-sided vendor promises rather than verifiable mechanisms. For builders working on wearable or ambient-sensing products, this is a reminder: a strong growth curve doesn’t mean the privacy design is right.

Next time you evaluate any product with built-in cameras or sensors, ask one question first: how can a bystander confirm they’re not being recorded?

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