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Lorde has made her stance on AI smart glasses crystal clear.
During her set at Madrid’s Mad Cool Festival over the weekend, the singer paused to take aim at the wearable AI technology, urging fans to think twice before embracing it.
“Increasingly, in our world, it gets harder and harder to know what is real,” she told the crowd. “Can I just say, for the record, f— the glasses. Don’t get the glasses. Not sexy.”
Lorde isn’t the only celebrity fuelling the conversation around AI-powered eyewear.
Kylie Jenner is facing backlash over her collaboration with Meta to design her own line of wearable tech, featuring a camera, hands-free recording capabilities and an AI assistant that sounds like her.
“2026, the year of realizing that I am the new voice of Meta AI. We love a tech moment,” Jenner said in an ad promoting the collaboration. Another ad features a call from the momager herself, Kris Jenner.
The collaboration has sparked criticism online, with some questioning the promotion of wearable cameras amid reports from around the world of people using smart glasses to secretly record others in public — particularly women — without consent.
Jenner has continued promoting the collection on social media. It includes a new cat-eye style designed with the star.
She wrote on Instagram last month, “cutest night with @metaglasses ! my meta glasses are out now 🤭,” though her comments section paint a different picture.
While some fans celebrated the launch, others called the glasses “a scary product by an untrustworthy company,” and the campaign “so out of touch it’s actually insane.” One person said the ads looked like “the beginning of a black mirror episode.”
Another commenter said, “these glasses are creepy af. People filming people without consent and using that footage isn’t cool at all.“
Others have pointed to Jenner’s past comments about being photographed by paparazzi as a teenager.
Critics point to Jenner’s own experience
“When I’m in LA, for some reason when I’m here, it’s hard for me to leave the house,” Jenner said in May on Jake Shane’s Therapuss podcast.
Jenner described being constantly swarmed by paparazzi as a young person in the public eye.
“There would be like six of them and they’d stand in front of my car as I was like 16 turning my car on,” she said. She added that they’d stand and wait, some even mocking her.
“They wanted to just make more money off a scandalous photo. And I was an underage girl by herself, I didn’t have security. It was scary at times.”
‘We should all be concerned’
Some critics say those experiences stand in stark contrast to Jenner’s decision to market the glasses.
“We should all be concerned,” said Farrah Khan, a consent educator and gender justice advocate.
“What we know about stalking and surveillance and harassment is that the majority of this harm happens to women. Women are subjected to it. So when she participates in that, it’s trying to shift that narrative and change it.
Khan said Jenner’s involvement could be percieved as “betrayal” by her fans and followers, but companies must ultimately be held accountable.
“Tech companies are profiting off of surveillance and harm and then are saying, ‘Well, it’s up to the user,'” she said. “Well, no, you are accountable and you need to be responsible in these moments in all times.”
CBC News asked Meta for an interview, but the company declined and instead pointed to a news release outlining the glasses’ safety features.
“There’s a light on the front of every pair of our AI glasses that we call a capture LED. Whenever content is being captured for your gallery, this white light blinks to let people know you’re capturing content,” the company said in the release.
“It’s there so people around you know when you are taking a photo or video you could save to your gallery and share with others. While mobile phones and action cameras don’t have this on their cameras, ours have had them since day one.”
Meta under pressure
Last week, Meta backtracked on a feature that would have allowed users of its apps to create AI content using other user’s public accounts. The feature drew concern from Hollywood agencies and unions, including CAA and SAG-AFTRA.
“No one’s name, image, likeness, voice, or creative work should be used by any third party, including AI models, without clear, documented consent,” CAA said in a statement.
In a statement emailed to CBC News shortly after 7 p.m. ET on Friday, a Meta spokesperson said: “We’ve heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it’s no longer available.”
