Smart glasses are an incredibly polarizing technology. Enthusiasts hail the remarkable convenience of having a smartphone connected to your vision throughout the day, while others raise significant privacy concerns about being recorded without their knowledge or consent. This last problem is real and Meta fortunately seems to want to tackle it.
Meta revealed a number of upcoming products at Meta Connect 2026, including its all-new Meta Audio glasses. These don’t have built-in cameras, which means they can’t be used to take photos or record videos. The glasses also don’t have an internal screen, and while there is a microphone, it’s primarily for voice calls and for inviting Muse, Meta’s new agentic AI voice assistant.
Excluding cameras and a digital interface leads to improved battery life and a greater variety of aesthetic choices. Meta claims that these audio-only glasses will offer the best battery life of the company’s smart glasses line, lasting up to a full day under normal use. They also support some styles not typically available on smart glasses, like the classic browline or the Clubmaster with its incredibly thin bottom edge. For those interested, you can pre-order the Ray-Ban Meta Audio AI glasses starting at $349 on the Ray-Ban website or directly from Meta.
Normal meta glasses also get a privacy overhaul
Audio-only glasses are a good first step in erasing the “glasses crawl” label that comes from smart glasses recording your private moments, but it’s not the only thing Meta is doing to address privacy concerns. The company is also making changes to upcoming and existing products to make it easier to tell if someone is recording you with smart glasses. This is a mandatory software update that affects all users and that messing with the LED that indicates when the device is recording will disable the camera.
The underlying functionality already existed before the update and users were only allowed to record with the discovery LED. However, some have worked around this condition by starting a recording with the LED exposed and then covering it later. The new update fixes this problem: your Meta glasses will now constantly check the status of the LEDs. If the sensors detect that the light is blocked at any time, the glasses will immediately stop recording and disable the camera.
Additionally, it is now impossible to physically change the light without affecting the camera. There have been cases where modders removed the LED lights from Meta Glasses, allowing recording without any indicators. After updating, physically damaging the LED will also render the camera completely unusable.
