AI Summary
5 min readIn September 2021, on host Charlie Warzel’s birthday, Facebook (soon to be Meta) launched its first-generation smart glasses in partnership with Ray-Ban. Unlike Google Glass, which repulsed the public, or Snap’s Spectacles, which never caught on, these looked like ordinary sunglasses. They could record 30 to 60 seconds of video, play music, and take calls. By 2023, Meta added AI software that let the glasses describe what a user was looking at. And by 2026, the glasses had become both more popular and more controversial — so much so that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel referred to them as “pervert glasses.” The Verge reporter Mia Sato, who has tracked the human impact of these devices, joins Warzel to explain what is happening on the ground and what it means for the rest of us.
The Glasses Are Surveilling Their Owners, Too
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:18) **The Pervert Glasses Problem** - Charlie Warzel introduces the episode's central tension: Meta's smart glasses are selling well while being called "pervert glasses" and eroding public privacy expectations.
- 2 (04:51) **Introducing Mia Sato** - Charlie brings on Verge reporter Mia Sato, who has extensively covered how these glasses are upending regular people's lives.
- 3 (05:18) **History of Smart Glasses** - Mia and Charlie walk through the failed history of wearable cameras, from Google Glass to Snapchat Spectacles, leading to Meta's 2021 launch with Ray-Ban.
- 4 (07:05) **The Glasses Surveil Their Owners Too** - Charlie highlights that Meta confirmed images shared with Meta AI may be used to train AI models, and that voice recordings are stored by default with no opt-out.
- 5 (09:04) **The Facial Recognition Bombshell** - Charlie reveals the February 2026 New York Times report on Meta's internal plans to add facial recognition to the glasses, including a leaked memo about launching during a "dynamic political environment" when civil society groups would be distracted.
- 6 (12:57) **Meta's Reputation Problem** - Mia explains that Meta has lost enormous public trust over the last decade and is facing lawsuits over harming young people, making it the wrong company to sell face-recognizing cameras.
- 7 (17:27) **Is Facial Recognition Inevitable?** - Charlie asks whether facial recognition is the "killer app" that Meta is clearly working toward, or a bridge too far.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Meta has been selling millions of its camera-equipped glasses, making all of us fodder for content creation—when we’re on the street, at the store, and in our workplaces. Host Charlie Warzel talks with Verge reporter Mia Sato about how regular people are being impacted as these glasses increase in use, the backlash to Flock cameras, and what happens in a world where we’re always being recorded.
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