Meta ditches the camera on its newest smart glasses

Walking around Meta Connect 2026, everyone’s sporting smart glasses in all sorts of shapes, colors, and sizes. It’s a marked difference here, a tech bubble where “pervert glasses” are not a concern.

Outside Connect, the public backlash against wearable surveillance tech — a catchall term that encompasses not just smart glasses, but also smartwatches and AI pendants — is gaining steam. So it’s incredibly curious timing that this year, the company is launching Ray-Ban Meta Audio Glasses: smart glasses infused with Meta AI, but with no camera for recording others.

To hear Meta tell it, that’s a coincidence. Audio-only glasses have been years in the making.