Meta's Newest Smart Glasses Ditched the Camera — and the Creep Factor

For years, the knock against Meta's smart glasses was simple: they look like ordinary glasses, but they can secretly film you. Meta's answer, announced this week at its Connect event, is a version with no camera at all. The new Ray-Ban Meta Audio Glasses start at $349 and do three things: play music and podcasts through tiny speakers in the arms, handle phone calls, and answer questions using Meta AI — a voice assistant that works like Siri or Alexa, waking up only when you say a trigger word.

Because there's no camera, the glasses got lighter — 43 grams versus roughly 50 for the camera version — and the arms are thinner, so they look less like gadgets. Battery life jumped to about 12 hours, since a camera is the biggest power drain. They come in two classic Ray-Ban shapes and 23 color and lens combinations, including prescription lenses.

That's the point: these are glasses first. Walking around a tech conference, everyone wears them without the side-eye that camera glasses now attract — the "perv glasses" label that has stuck as backlash against wearable cameras grows. But here's the catch. Meta added no new privacy controls, no bright recording light, no alert to people nearby. It says the glasses only listen for a wake word, like an Amazon Echo sitting in your house, and don't send audio anywhere until you actually speak to it.

And the camera isn't gone from Meta's lineup. A new third-generation Ray-Ban Meta with cameras also launched, with a sixth microphone for clearer calls and slightly better battery. So if you want privacy, you now have a choice to buy — but the industry still isn't giving you one by default.