Meta makes some of the most popular smart glasses on the market, which has led to some issues for the company. Namely, it's dealing with people using them as "pervert glasses" to photograph and record people without their permission.
Sure, the glasses have a light that shows when they're capturing, but some users have modified them to hide the light.
Meta has attempted to stem the backlash by rolling out updates, including one that disables the camera if the LED has been covered or tampered with. And now it appears it has a plan B in mind.
According to a report from The Information, Mark Zuckerberg and company could launch a pair of Meta glasses without cameras as soon as next week at Meta Connect.
Does anyone actually want smart glasses without cameras? Personally, my main use case for my Meta Glasses is recording videos and taking photos while golfing, so taking that away would render the glasses all but useless to me.
Meta Glasses without cameras
Meta is currently calling the glasses-free smart glasses Luna internally. According to the The Information report, it's expected to announce them at Meta Connect on Sept. 23, so we won't have to wait.
Apparently, the glasses will launch in Clubmaster and Burbank styles. They'll still have the audio features offered by current Meta Glasses. They'll reportedly have six microphones, which means you can ask them for directions and do all other kinds of AI-based tasks without taking your phone out of your pocket.
The practicality of these new glasses will depend heavily on how useful you find those audio features (I do listen to music on my Meta Glasses, but I almost never use any of the "Hey Meta" features).
If the report is accurate, Meta will ship the camera-free glasses in October. It'll be interesting to see whether these are popular, or whether they're strictly an attempt by Meta to show it's taking steps to prevent people from using the glasses inappropriately.
This feels like a move Meta needs to make to keep its smart glasses business moving forward, as some jurisdictions are starting to ban the current camera-toting models in public places.
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