Explained: The backlash behind Meta's 'pervert glasses', and its new audio-only fix

Meta, the social media giant, launched its first-ever consumer product, the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, back in 2023. These glasses were built to be invisible tech, with a camera and a voice assistant hidden inside a pair of ordinary-looking sunglasses. Meta’s entry in the smart glasses market was anticipated to be revolutionary, but its invisibility has now become a major privacy problem. What made these glasses popular has now become the centre of controversy, leading to the unwanted nickname “pervert glasses.”

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What are “pervert glasses”? 

Meta Ray-Ban glasses are not officially called ‘pervert glasses,’ but it is a name given by people on social media who raised concerns over its misuse. The nickname emerged after videos appeared showing men allegedly using camera-equipped Ray-Ban Meta glasses to secretly record women in public.

However, the backlash grew into a broader problem about how devices with built-in cameras can be misused to record people without their knowledge or consent. In March 2026, the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses raised covert filming, harassment, and privacy concerns, according to a Wired report. Many influencers and pickup artists also started using Meta glasses to record unsolicited interactions with women without their knowledge.

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After the backlash started to grow, Meta announced to remove content involving harassment and targeting of people, including pickup-artist-style videos, in July 2026. The company also said to removed creator accounts that violated its policies.

Concerns get more serious than pranks

In another report, Wired highlighted that Meta could be planning to build facial-recognition code for the smartglasses that can identify strangers. However, 75 civil liberties organisations, including the ACLU and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, urged Meta to abandon facial-recognition plans for its glasses, amid concerns around stalking and harassment.

In other news, Meta was accused of subcontracting workers who may sometimes review photos and videos captured by its AI smart glasses. Meta also acknowledged the claims and said that this review is done to improve the product and user experience. According to an investigation, workers at a Meta subcontractor in Kenya were able to see some of the content captured by the glasses, which included several sensitive visuals of people undressing or handling financial documents.

Meta’s new camera-free glasses come to rescue

Amid backlash and ongoing concerns, Meta has launched a new audio-only version of smart glasses called Ray-Ban Meta Audio, which does not consist built-in camera. The glasses will retain the audio features of the original smart glasses.

The $349 glasses play music, take calls, translate speech, and talk to Meta AI, but cannot take a photo or record a second of video. However, the glasses would apparently have fewer privacy implications, because they don't rely on the same camera-based functionality. While this reduces the risk of being secretly filmed, the glasses can still hear conversation via microphone. Audio can face stricter privacy laws than video.

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In several parts of the US, recording a private conversation without the consent of everyone involved can be illegal. 12 states, including California, Illinois, and Washington, have all-party consent rules for certain confidential conversations. Furthermore, the major issue is not whether the microphone records audio; it is whether that audio can be transcribed, analysed, used to train AI, or transmitted elsewhere.

In addition, the audio-only smart glasses do not come with a recording light, which means someone next to a person wearing AI glasses may have no idea if their voice is being recorded. Therefore, it's unclear whether Meta launched the camera-free glasses to address the concern or whether it was a new segment aimed at users who want AI-powered features without a camera.