How tech firms hope to beat the backlash against ‘pervert glasses’

A year ago, this correspondent lost the charging case for his Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and, with some relief, had to stop using their camera, audio and artificial intelligence features. He still wore them as shades. But this summer, during an open air performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a parent of a member of the young cast accused him of covertly filming the event. Since then, he has felt creepy using them even in dumb mode.

He is not alone. In recent months, after videos emerged of men using the glasses to secretly record and harass women, some have referred to Ray-Ban Metas, sold by Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant in conjunction with EssilorLuxottica, a Franco-Italian eyewear-maker, as “pervert glasses”.