Meta’s AI glasses meet Kylie Jenner backlash

Meta’s AI – Meta is trying to sell AI glasses with Kylie Jenner’s high-profile promotion, but the debut is drawing online scorn—and echoes the backlash that helped sink Google Glass a decade earlier. The glasses are positioned as a more stylish, cheaper alternative, with

For days, Kylie Jenner has been living the tech-infused spotlight again—posting about “@metaglasses” and celebrating in New York with Mark Zuckerberg. But outside the party, the reaction has been blunt, fast, and familiar.

Meta’s AI glasses launched with celebrity gloss and the kind of marketing that turns product rollouts into cultural moments. Jenner’s Instagram post—published as a carousel—announced, “Cutest night with @metaglasses!. My meta glasses are out now,” as she marked the week with Zuckerberg. But in the hours after the promotion. the comments and chatter moved in the other direction: mocking comparisons. privacy alarms. and an angry reminder of how wearable technology can backfire.

The criticism isn’t random. It’s tethered to the story of Google Glass. Long before today’s tech giants forced their way into co-chairing the Met Gala. Google co-founder Sergey Brin sat in the front row of Diane Von Furstenberg’s 2013 spring show wearing an early prototype of what would become known as Google Glass. Von Furstenberg herself donned wearable smartglasses as she directed models down the runway, with some models also wearing Google Glass. The moment looked like a powerful partnership—tech meeting fashion—at just the right time.

Google Glass later became one of the “Best Inventions of the Year. ” received celebrity-packed promotions. and benefited from generous Vogue spreads. Yet it “infamously flopped. ” with the story of its failure tied to a lack of demand for clunky lenses that mainly took photos and sent alerts for incoming text messages. Privacy concerns also swirled around the technology.

That history is now being pulled into the present as Meta and Jenner try to make AI glasses happen. In the viral comment responding to Jenner’s Meta glasses post. one user wrote. “Meta glasses are cybertrucks for the face.” Others used language that mirrors earlier warnings about surveillance. “Mass surveillance predator glasses yesssss,” one user wrote on Jenner’s Instagram. Another added, “Legit people are putting others in danger with this technology.”.

Meta’s defenders point to differences from the Google Glass era. Meta Glasses, the article notes, are designed in partnership with Ray-Ban parent company EssilorLuxottica. They’re also described as more aesthetically pleasing than their Google predecessor. And they come with a price tag that starts at $299, while Jenner’s limited Starfire edition is slightly more at $399.

Still, the mismatch between the pitch and the mood seems to be the real problem. Meta’s bet leans on a cultural moment that may not exist in the way its marketers want. The article argues that. even after all the attention and celebrity endorsements. the underlying question remains the same one that haunted Google Glass: who actually wants these devices?.

The stakes for Meta are also entangled with Kylie Jenner’s own trajectory. The article recalls that in the mid-2010s. Jenner was “seemingly everywhere. ” building a social media dominance that. in 2018. commanded $1 million per sponsored Instagram post. It also points to an immensely popular cosmetics line at the time. But it also stresses that Jenner’s commercial pull looks weaker now: Kylie Cosmetics is described as “nowhere near as popular as it once was. ” and Jenner’s clothing line. KHY. “has yet to make an impact since launching in 2023.”.

The pitch is built on the platform connection, too. Meta owns Instagram. and the article frames Jenner—an internet persona known as “King Kylie. ” a name fans used for the youngest of the Kardashian-Jenner machine—as a natural fit for selling Meta’s new line of AI glasses. It further notes that Jenner has also used Snapchat to help fuel her rise. and that she is “now in the AI glasses business.”.

At Tuesday’s Meta Connect developer conference. Mark Zuckerberg showed a prototype of computer glasses that can display digital objects in transparent lenses. But while the company was presenting the technology. the reception outside the party was shaped by distrust and irritation—especially toward the idea of putting AI into everyday life.

The article places that skepticism in a wider political-cultural landscape. describing hostility to AI that spans the political spectrum and includes opposition to data centers popping up in backyards. complaints that the aesthetics of AI “suck. ” and antipathy toward billionaire overlords. including Zuckerberg. The result is that Meta’s attempt to make AI glasses ubiquitous lands in a context where people are already bracing for the technology to become inescapable.

Even Jenner’s closest orbit seems to underline the tension between hype and reality. The article notes that Timothée Chalamet was at Tuesday’s event—though he apparently didn’t want to be seen, and “even perhaps even more notably,” did not appear to be wearing a pair of Meta Glasses.

Meta is pushing forward with a product that looks more fashionable and costs less than the smartglasses that came before. But the backlash—grounded in privacy fears. mockery. and the unresolved question of desire—suggests this time may not be about whether the glasses can work. It may be about whether anyone wants the world they come with.

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