Smart glasses are officially here

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Smart Glasses Are Officially Here"

Podcast: Today, Explained by Vox
Episode Date: July 8, 2026
Host(s): Sean Rameswaram
Guests: Victoria Song (The Verge), Callie Hayes (BBC)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Today, Explained explores the current state of smart glasses, their potential uses, privacy anxieties, and the societal and ethical questions they raise. With insights from experienced tech journalist Victoria Song (The Verge) and senior tech reporter Callie Hayes (BBC), the discussion navigates the technological advances since Google Glass, current applications, and mounting privacy concerns as big tech pushes forward.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Evolution & Design of Smart Glasses

• Google Glass’s Flop, Meta & Snap’s New Attempts:
  • Google Glass failed a decade ago ("It looks like a power scouter that they would wear in Dragon Ball Z." – Victoria Song, 02:28), mostly due to its unwieldy, futuristic design that made wearers stand out.
  • Meta (in partnership with Ray-Ban) and Snapchat are now making more "normal-looking" glasses that blend in with current style trends (e.g., chunky hipster frames).
  • The technology is getting sleeker but is still dictated by the necessary hardware—camera, speakers, battery—so frames remain noticeably thicker.
• Device Variety:
  • "I call it the spaghetti era of smart glasses, because they're just really throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks." – Victoria Song (04:31)

2. How People Use Smart Glasses Today

• Personal & Everyday Uses:
  • Listening to audio (like TikTok) privately around the house, taking calls, or using as open-ear headphones.
  • Content creators utilize first-person camera features, e.g., filming cycling or daily activities (05:23).
  • Novelty applications—first-person "film paparazzi" footage of pets or vacations.
• Accessibility Applications:
  • "I've done interviews with a lot of low vision and blind people who say that this technology has really changed their lives because there is a Be My Eyes integration." – Victoria Song (06:36)
  • Smart glasses can stream the wearer’s view to a sighted volunteer or use AI to describe objects, menus, or provide live captions and translations.

3. AI Integration and the Promise/Challenge of a ‘Killer App’

• Big Tech’s Vision:
  • Tech leaders (especially at Meta) see AI—multimodal assistants—as the “killer use case.” Imagine instantaneous information, reminders, and translation in your line of sight.
  • Example: "Hey Meta, explain the history of the fossils in front of me." – Victoria Song paraphrasing product demo scenarios (10:03)
• Current Limitations:
  • "The tech is not fully there yet, but that's the future they're trying to sell to everybody." – Victoria Song (10:57)
  • Battery life (AI features drain it in 30 minutes), weight, social awkwardness, and privacy still major barriers.

4. Privacy, Power, and Possible Abuse

• Recording & Consent Concerns:
  • Cameras are harder to notice than phone cameras; LED indicator lights are intended as a safeguard, but can be disabled or ignored.
  • "If you were to Google, 'Meta plus LED light right now,' a lot of the results...would be how to disable the light and the camera still works." – Callie Hayes (19:44)
• Potential for Misuse:
  • Covert filming, harassment, and sexually explicit content are highlighted as current risks.
  • "But the way it's kind of growing in popularity, I think could be a cause of bigger concern for people." – Callie Hayes (18:40)
  • Facial recognition is on the horizon—glasses could ID strangers using AI:
    • "Groups like the ACLU say the technology would empower stalkers, sexual predators, and scammers, allowing them to identify people without consent." – Callie Hayes (21:15)
• Laws & Regulation:
  • Existing regulations are piecemeal. Stronger protections in South Korea (loud shutter law), the EU (GDPR), and China (voluntary limits).
  • In the U.S., privacy laws are notably weak and tech corporations are not advocating for stronger restrictions.
  • Employers and some localities are creating their own bans (in workplaces, courthouses, for drivers in Illinois).

5. Societal Response & Personal Agency

• Social Awkwardness and Resistance:
  • Many users (like Victoria) still feel uncomfortable recording in public and see public backlash possible ("In my day to day life, they are a pair of glorified headphones." – Victoria Song, 13:55).
• How to Respond to Wearers:
  • Callie Hayes suggests:
    • "If you notice somebody talking to you with a pair of these glasses, I would have absolutely no qualms in just asking them to be taken off before you snap them off and break them." (26:13)
  • Viral moment: A woman broke a stranger's smart glasses on the subway in protest ("She just broke my meta glasses. You're gonna be famous on the Internet." – Anonymous, 25:38).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Why Google Glass Failed:
  • "If you've ever watched Dragon Ball Z, it looks like a power scouter that they would wear...Something super futuristic, Easy to pick people out on a street for." – Victoria Song (02:28)
• On Big Tech’s AI Ambitions:
  • "Glasses are the ideal form factor for personal superintelligence because they let you stay present in the moment while getting access to all these AI capabilities..." – Quoted from Meta's leadership (09:15)
• On Accessibility Benefits:
  • "Blind and low vision people...say that this technology has really changed their lives because there is a Be My Eyes integration." – Victoria Song (06:36)
• On Privacy Limits:
  • "If you really want to do some really nasty stuff, the battery is not going to last very long on these. It's not comforting...but...the technology is still quite limited in what it can do long term." – Victoria Song (12:33)
• On Facial Recognition Fears:
  • "You would have your glasses on, you would clock someone...and they would pull up their various profiles." – Callie Hayes (21:25)
  • "Groups like the ACLU say the technology would empower stalkers, sexual predators, and scammers." – Callie Hayes (21:18)
• On U.S. Law and Responsibility:
  • "I would say the US has some of the weakest privacy laws in the world." – Callie Hayes (24:20)
• On What People Can Do:
  • "I think you kind of can't, which is one of the most disconcerting parts about it. Your autonomy is taken away because somebody staring at you is wearing a recording device." – Callie Hayes (24:59)

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Timeline of Important Segments

• [02:11] – [04:31]: Victoria Song on design, tech, and personal use cases
• [05:14] – [07:48]: Accessibility & AI-assisted features (Be My Eyes, live captions, translations)
• [08:16] – [10:57]: AI as 'killer app', future vision, current shortcomings
• [11:14] – [13:55]: Battery, comfort, mainstream adoption hurdles
• [17:44] – [21:25]: Callie Hayes on privacy, creepiness, facial recognition, and legislative gaps
• [24:25] – [26:13]: What individuals and workplaces can/can’t do to protect privacy

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Conclusions & Takeaways

• Smart glasses are here, but adoption is slow and uses are niche—primarily audio/listening, assistive technology, and vlogging.
• Big tech bets AI will be the paradigm-shifting feature, but hardware and privacy are unresolved hurdles.
• Privacy concerns are major and present, with legal protections lagging behind technology.
• In public and at work, social norms and individual assertiveness may be the only tools to push back on unwanted recording—for now.

This episode underscores both the promise and perils of smart glasses, capturing the ongoing tension between innovation, utility, and personal privacy.

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Transcript

[A]

Remember Snapchat, the app best known for being the place to send disappearing photos and videos to your friends? Well, Snapchat was back in the news recently, but this time it was not about disappearing photos and videos. It was about smart glasses that you put and keep on your face. Snapchat was trying to get in on the game with a pair of black horn rimmed looking spectacles. Think the pair that the old man in up wears, but like three times thicker and with a price tag of 2,199 doll photos of Snap CEO Evan Spiegel wearing his specs. That's what they're called by the way. Specs were all over the Internet and not in a good way. People were laughing and they laughed all the way over the stock market where Snap took a hit. But as you're gonna hear on Today Explained from Vox, Snap's playing the long game with smart glasses and the rest of big tech is too. Smart glasses are officially here, so we're gonna talk about them and worry about our privacy on the show today.

[B]

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[C]

You listening to

[A]

Daily explained Sean Ramis, firm here with Victoria Song. She's a senior reviewer for the Verge. She's been writing a lot about why smart glasses are back even though Google Glass flopped over a decade ago. Wow, that was over a decade ago.

[C]

Google Glass. I would say one of the big reasons it failed was the design. If you've ever watched Dragon Ball Z, it looks like A power scouter that they would wear Vegeta.

[A]

What does a scouter say about its power level? It's over 9,000.

[C]

Something super futuristic, Easy to pick people out on a street for. And what Meta did was they partnered with Essilor Luxottica, which owns brands like Ray Ban Oakley. Very popular, very stylish. And they made these glasses look like an average pair of glasses, something that people wouldn't feel too weird wearing. I'm wearing a pair right now of.

[A]

I was gonna ask. Because you are wearing Victoria. I mean, I don't know you personally, but I am looking at you, and your glasses look very thick.

[C]

They do.

[A]

Is that because they're smart glasses?

[C]

Partly. Partly, it's because they are smart glasses. So smart glasses have to actually house a lot of tech components inside of them. These have a camera in the hinge and also a privacy LED light in the hinge. If I take them off, like, you're gonna see that there are speakers and are battery components in the actual arms themselves. They're quite thick. But it also is the style for a lot of chunky glasses have been stylish for a while. If you think about the Brooklyn hipster aesthetic, it's not anything too out of the ordinary there. I actually have several smart glasses on my desk.

[A]

Oh, my gosh. You're holding six cases for spectacles, it looks like.

[C]

Yeah, Yeah, I am.

[A]

Thank you for bringing props to this interview.

[C]

I'm bringing props to this interview. You know, I have another pair here. They're called the Even Realities G2, and they're a lot thinner.

[A]

Yeah, those I might not even notice.

[C]

So I'm wearing these glasses, but these don't have a camera, which means they can be much slimmer in terms of how they look. But there are speakers that you can hear things off of. So, you know, these devices have different feature sets. Like, if you want to see a pair that's even thicker than the ones I have on now. Yes. These are also by Meta. These are called the Meta Ray Ban display, and there is, like, an invisible display in the lens here. So they come in a lot of different styles. I call it the spaghetti era of smart glasses, because they're just really throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. But none of these tech giants has really figured out what the absolute killer use case is. So

[A]

I want to talk about what's going on right now. But. But while we're on this train and talking about your specific experience, can you just tell us what you use these Ray Bans that you're wearing right now that are smart glasses for in your day to day because it sounds like you actually wear them.

[C]

Yeah, I gotta test this technology and I would say probably the thing I use the most for is listening to TikTok audio privately. So.

[A]

So like around your house, not like on a subway or something?

[C]

Around my house there's headphones basically built into the temple. So you know it's not obsc your ear. So you can, you can take calls from your glasses. You can just use them as a pair of like open ear headphones. There are also cameras built into this particular pair of glasses. So if you're a content creator, you could get first person footage very easily. There are a pair of like Oakleys which are really wild looking, you know, they look like Oakleys, the kind of the jabroni glasses that you see. And they're great for, you know, if you're a cyclist and you want to get footage of your run like, or your bike ride, that's, that's primarily what a lot of people use that for. If I'm, I don't really take footage in public because it's, it's a little bit awkward. I don't like doing that. But in my own house, do I act as a film paparazzi for my cats? Absolutely I do. Some people say that that's what they do with their cats, children and on vacations. And then in particular, you know, I've done interviews with a lot of low vision and blind people who say that this technology has really changed their lives because there is a Be My eyes integration. And what that is, is it connects what the blind person or the low vision person is seeing with a sighted volunteer through a phone call.

[D]

Hey, meta, call Be my eyes.

[C]

So you have POV footage that they can see or they can use this feature called Live AI where the AI will describe like a menu for them and so then they can independently read a menu which may not have braille.

[D]

I have some mail here and I'm wondering if you could just help me

[C]

sort through junk mail and real mail. Sure, I can help you with that. Hi, I'm calling because I need help

[B]

finding some items in my pantry.

[D]

Okay, so problem.

[C]

Certain versions of the display glasses can put live captions over people when they're talking. So for people who are hard of hearing, they may be able to have a better sense of what people are saying with them. You can also get live translations with these devices. They are very finicky in certain respects, but you know, those are just some examples of how people are using the technology currently.

[A]

I'm glad you brought up AI, because I think when we talk about tech on this show most frequently lately, we are talking about AI, we're talking about software, but here we are once again talking about hardware, which almost feels like passe at this point because so much of our nation's focus has turned to artificial intelligence. But you're saying that all these big companies that are developing AI are betting big on these glasses. Is there a boatload of money to be made on smart glasses?

[C]

You know, I think the very cynical take of it is that, yes, they're going to put a bunch of cameras on everyone's faces, just like how they put a bunch of cameras on everyone's smartphones, and they're going to get a bunch of data that way that they'll then use in their ad businesses. I think that's totally valid to be suspicious of the companies for wanting to do that.

[A]

So you're just going to see ads, like, half an inch away from your eyeball all the time.

[C]

I think that's the dystopia that people are worried about or the dream in terms of ad dollars from Big Tec. Let's just put it this way. They're looking for a killer use case for these glasses. Just how, like, fitness and health tracking alerts were kind of a killer use case for smartwatches. Because in the beginning of smartwatches, everyone was like, well, why do I need that? I have my phone. The Meta executive team, like, we're talking Andrew Bosworth, who is their cto, and Mark Zuckerberg, even they have been, like, very vocal about how they view AI to be the killer use case for these glasses.

[A]

Now, glasses are the ideal form factor for personal superintelligence because they let you stay present in the. In the moment while getting access to all of these AI capabilities that make you smarter, help you communicate better, improve your memory, improve your senses, and more,

[C]

because you can take the assistant with you in the ear and it can see what you see. They call this multimodal AI, meaning the glasses camera can look at the world around you, and then you can interact with an AI about what you're actually seeing in real time. And the examples they give are like, oh, let's say you go to a museum and you want to learn a little bit more about the painting in front of you.

[A]

Hey, Meta, what is this artwork comedian

[B]

by Mauricio Catalan, worth $6.2 million?

[D]

What? These meta glasses. The only thing I say, hey, Meta, explain the History of the fossils in front of me. And the meta glasses will explain to you the history.

[C]

You could theoretically ask the AI, oh, what's next on my calendar and see a little calendar notification pop up in your eye. And so the idea is you don't have to take out your phone. You can just ask the AI and have it show up in your classes. And, you know, it's a nice thought.

[A]

So I think our call will be coming in any moment now. Foz WhatsApp video call. There we go. Uh, oh, well, I. Let's see what happened there. That's too bad. I don't know what happened.

[C]

Hey, meta, translate this sign. Translation from Spanish to English. No, it's not in Spanish.

[D]

Meta. Hey, meta, translate this sign.

[C]

The tech is not fully there yet, but that's the future that they're trying to sell to everybody. And they believe, as far as hardware goes, that glasses is the ideal form factor for getting. Getting everyone kind of more on board with these AI assistants in their everyday life.

[A]

So as someone who uses them, what do you think they still need to figure out?

[C]

A lot. They actually, there is a lot. You know, the privacy question is the big one. But outside of privacy, there's. There's a lot of questions that they still need to answer. Just like, how are you going to get people with 2020 vision to willingly put on a pretty heavy pair of glasses? Like, when I wear them for a long period of time, I'm talking four or five stretches. I tend to get headaches a lot of the time just because they are so heavy on my face. And then you have to think about things like battery life. I mentioned the live AI feature that will kill these. If you have these fully charged, 100% charged live AI, that feature will kill it in 30 minutes.

[A]

So you're talking about helping people who are like, visually impaired, but it's gonna help them for about 30 minutes.

[C]

About 30 minutes. Some of the blind and low vision people that I've spoken to, they carry two pairs around. So when they really need, they just are constantly switching between two pairs because the battery life is not ideal for that use case. It's not easy to get the battery replaced or repaired. So, you know, for anyone who's really worried about the privacy stuff, I'm not saying don't be worried about it. I am saying that there are very technical limitations for these as surveillance devices. Most importantly, like, the battery is. If you really want to do some really nasty stuff, the battery is not going to last very long on these. It's not comforting because you can still take surreptitious photos or whatnot. But it is kind of one of those things where at least right now the technology is still quite limited in what it can do long term.

[A]

We're gonna talk about the nasty stuff you could do with these glasses in the second half of the show. But before we do that, it sounds like there's still a lot to be figured out. But as someone who's using them right now, what do you think? Are we gonna see way more people wearing these in what, 1 year?

[B]

2?

[A]

5? 10?

[C]

So we've seen a lot of people adopt these in the last three years, but it's still a niche product. It's still very early adopter phase. We're still having these conversations about how much of this tech we want on our faces and what features are actually useful for people. So I think you're looking at five to 10 years realistically. So what you have is big tech companies laying down the groundwork and kind of priming you to think about, oh, the next iteration of gadget that I want on me at all times is a pair of glasses. Whether or not people glom onto that idea, I'm quite a skeptic. I've been covering the space for over a decade now. It's been inched and along in my day to day life. They are a pair of glorified headphones. There's a lot of of thinking and tinkering and basically public conversations that we need to have about this technology before I could ever really realistically say that this is going to be a thing that everyone is going to have on their face.

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[A]

They called me Google class.

[D]

My name is Cali Hayes. I'm a senior tech reporter at the BBC covering mostly big tech and big AI in North America.

[A]

Okay, Callie. We were just talking to Victoria over from the Verge and we were talking about smart glasses in a sort of expository fashion. But she did at one point mention that there's a lot of nasty stuff one could do with this technology and we wanted to save the question of what is said nasty stuff for you. So what are we talking about?

[D]

Yeah, there are various things that would fall in the nasty category, just consensual. Recording men approaching women and sort of taunting them, trying to get pickup lines on them and seeing their reactions.

[A]

Hey, can I ask you something?

[B]

What?

[A]

Just I need your number.

[D]

I have a question.

[A]

I thought you were like, you look like a model.

[C]

What's your name?

[B]

Riley.

[A]

Riley, let me get your Instagram before

[D]

she takes you away. But also, you know, videos that have to do with nudity, sex, bathroom stuff. It kind of runs the gambit of ew. But the way it's kind of growing in popularity, I think could be a cause of bigger concern for people. We're talking about 10 million of Meta's glasses alone sold. So it's sort of at this tipping point of becoming much more popular, being seen much more often in society. And what these glasses effectively are as, you know, a camera on your face, it's much less obtrusive, much less obvious to people that they're being recorded when somebody just has glasses on.

[A]

And I think Victoria mentioned that these Ray Ban Wayfair Meta smart glasses have like an LED light that tells you you're being recorded. Does that not protect women or anyone else who may not want to be recorded?

[D]

You know, in a perfect world, yes. It's just the onus is on the person being recorded to know that a little light up in the corner of a pair of otherwise normal looking frames mean that you are being recorded right now. But then there's also, I mean if you were to like Google, you know, meta plus LED light right now, a lot of the results that you would see would be how to disable the light and the camera still works.

[A]

Here is a step by step tutorial on how to remove the LED from your Meta glasses.

[D]

We're going to basically drill into that LED. I have a perfectly good drill, brand

[A]

new, I bought $3 drill bits.

[D]

So it's just again, the onus is completely on the person ostensibly being recorded to know and stop it.

[A]

Are there other reasons to be creeped out by smart glasses than maybe being unwittingly recorded?

[D]

There are Meta specifically, they're working on putting what's essentially facial recognition technology inside their glasses. So it wouldn't just be about being recorded and it would be about being identified also. It's not like a huge leap to think about who maybe would be interested in technology like that. Who would be interested in buying glasses with technology that could very quickly and easily identify people on the street. That is not here yet. That has been reported by Wired in the New York Times and others as being tested by Meta.

[A]

If they work, the glasses would have

[C]

the same technology used by the government and the police to record everything and

[A]

identify everyone everyone sees.

[C]

Groups like the ACLU say the technology

[D]

would empower stalkers, sexual predators, and scammers,

[C]

allowing them to identify people without consent.

[D]

So you would have your glasses on, you would clock someone. You would ask, meta, AI, hey, meta, who is this person? And they would pull up their various profiles. When you have technology like that, that's that functional with tying somebody you're seeing in real life to whatever photos they have online. That kind of technology can be used in a lot of different ways.

[A]

Who's out here advocating for our privacy? At the moment, there are a few

[D]

laws that have been passed. Illinois could soon ban drivers from using those AI smart glasses behind the wheel.

[A]

Today, a ban on smart glasses inside

[C]

Philadelphia courthouses goes into effect.

[A]

In fact, the new rule also excludes smart glasses with prescriptions.

[D]

But other laws, you know, like gdpr, for instance, in the eu, it's pretty strong about this because it requires explicit consent already to be recorded like this. Like in South Korea, too, for instance, they have a loud shutter law for photos for, like, your phone. So it makes a noise when you're taking photos that, like, is audible. People really don't like it for the most part, but it works. People know. And they did that because they stop scrapes. Exactly. They did it. They enacted it, like, 20 years ago because they were having such a huge problem with upskirting. People were just taking their phones on the escalator, and, like, nobody knew. So they ended up doing the loud shutter law. But South Korea, for instance, has much better broader privacy laws than the US Does. China just put out a voluntary moratorium on some kinds of. Of technological capabilities, but it is entirely voluntary.

[A]

Why is it the United States doesn't care to offer the same protections to its people than, say, I don't know, Europe, South Korea, maybe, in this case, even China? Is it just because we're so bullish on tech that we, you know, don't want to put up any guardrails, especially? And even if it means that some creeper could be creeping on your mom, on your wife, on your child?

[D]

I think there is definitely a big contingent of people in positions of power right now that would argue that every concern that you just laid out is just kind of cost of doing business, like, sorry, sorry, your face got put on Instagram as kind of like a pickup line tutorial, and you don't like it. Like, whoops because it's just like this perfect virtuous cycle for these social media companies in particular, that have helped for a very long time, wanted something like an os, like an amazing form factor for them that you buy, you wear, you record, you post, and then it just keeps pumping. So they have no interest in supporting, I don't think, new laws. But it's not just them either. I mean, a lot of politicians just. I would say the US has some of the weakest privacy laws in the world.

[A]

And in the meantime, I mean, for all the people listening to this who are already creeped out by the fact that the person next to them on the bus, at the doctor's office, at the grocery store, at the waxing place

[D]

at work, employers are starting to have to deal with this. They're starting to have to enact their own laws in the workplace that say you can't wear these in meetings, you cannot wear these into the bathroom, et cetera, et cetera.

[A]

Okay, there you go. Thanks, employers. But what do the rest of us do? How do we ensure that our privacy isn't being violated by. By smart glass technology?

[D]

I think you kind of can't, which is one of the most disconcerting parts about it. Your autonomy is taken away because somebody staring at you is wearing a recording device.

[A]

Let's not despair. You could always wear, like, a Richard Nixon mask and a snowsuit.

[D]

I guess you could. Or like, I've thought about just, like, jokingly wearing a sandwich board out that says, I do not consent to being recorded.

[C]

Is that what it's gonna take?

[D]

No. Exactly. It's like I have to look like a complete moron. But, you know, there have been instances, too. Like last year, that woman who remains unidentified, God bless her, she was on the subway and she broke that guy's meta AI glasses, and then he posted about it.

[A]

She just broke my meta glasses. You're gonna be famous on the Internet.

[D]

She's perfect. I hope she called him a dork for wearing them before she broke them.

[A]

How do you send flowers to a stranger for a good deed?

[D]

I would also just recommend just being aware of what these glasses look like, what constitutes them, telling you that they are on and recording. And if you notice somebody talking to you with a pair of these glasses, I would have absolutely no qualms in just asking them to be taken off

[A]

before you snap them off and break them.

[D]

Yeah, I wouldn't feel awkward about that at all. I think sometimes people feel like maybe it's confrontational or maybe you're crossing a line. It's like the line has already been crossed by somebody wearing a camera on their face. So I think it's totally fine that you push back.

[A]

Cali Hayes, based in Cali BBC.com earlier you heard from Victoria's song from theverge.com, this is today explained from vox.com, avi Jayartsi produced the show today. Jolie Myers edited, Gabriel Donatov checked the facts. David Tadashore and Patrick Boyd mixed the show and we are heading to church tomorrow.