Meta’s camera-equipped smart glasses have proven more successful than other entrants to the market, but they also deeply unsettle some consumers, who see them as invasive symbols of a dystopian surveillance society spiraling out of control. Now, the company has reportedly decided to sell glasses that don’t come with integrated spying equipment as it weathers complaints that it sells “perverted glasses.”
According to The Information, Meta is developing a new smart glasses model called Luna. This model does not have a camera and has a convenient system for communicating with the company’s AI chatbot and Muse, an AI consumer agent. The glasses have six built-in microphones that allow users to communicate with a chatbot, and press a button on the side of the glasses to activate the AI system.
Luna could be announced at the same time as MetaConnect, Meta’s annual hardware and developer event in Menlo Park next week, the paper reports.
TechCrunch has reached out to Meta for more information.
The smart glasses industry has grown over the past few years, and Meta is near the front of the pack of providers. But concerns about usability, cost, and privacy dog the business, and many consumers are still unsure about how, why, or whether they should use the devices. Meta’s Reality Labs, the company responsible for developing the smart glasses product line, is still suffering huge losses, as revealed in its April earnings report.
