Never work with children or animals, so goes the famous advice for stage performers, entertainers, and anyone having to present something live in front of an audience. Perhaps smart glasses should be added to that list, if yesterday's Meta Connect 2025 livestream is anything to go by—as the new Ray-Ban Meta glasses took the opportunity to misbehave at almost ever turn.
Unveiled to great fanfare and a rapt audience by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the second-generation smart glasses were promised to be capable of "empowering people with new abilities" and said to allow users to "make themselves smarter" thanks to the newly-polished AI functionality. Cool stuff, but when it came to the demos, things didn't exactly go to plan.
Switching over to a livestreamed demonstration, displayed to the audience on a gigantic panel at Zuckerberg's side, chef Jack Mancuso attempted to use the Live AI functionality of the smart specs to help them make a Korean-inspired steak sauce. Standing in front of multiple unprepared ingredients (which the glasses appeared to initially recognise) the Meta specs immediately ignored a prompt to help make the sauce, instead listing the ingredients that might go in it.
Interrupting, Mancuso asked the AI a reasonable question: "What do I do first?" After a long silence, in which metaphorical pins could be heard dropping in the audience, Mancuso asked again. The AI then merrily informed our now visibly-nervous host that the base of the sauce was already made.
Another long pause. "What do I do first?" Mancuso asked once more, to laughter from the audience. "You've already combined the base ingredients," the AI continued, helpfully telling Mancuso to grate a pear into the non-existent sauce. "Alright, I think the Wi-Fi might be messed up" said Mancuso, looking embarrassed. "Back to you Mark."
"It's all good, it's all good" said Zuckerberg, amid cheers, laughter, and applause from the crowd. "The irony of all this whole thing is that you spend years making technology and then the Wi-Fi on the day kinda... catches you. We'll go check out what he made later."
Still, more demos were yet to come. Later in the presentation, Zuckerberg donned a pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses himself, along with a wristband interface said to be able to control the glasses through muscle movements.
"Now, I want to get into this in more detail, we've got two options," said Zuckerberg, laughing nervously. "We've got the slides, or we've got the live demo." At this point, the audience erupted into shouts for the live version, unsurprisingly, along with more laughter.
Guess how it went. Zuckerberg was able to respond to a video call request with text via hand movements, which is fairly impressive, but was unable to answer the call itself.
"Uh-oh," said the Meta CEO, frantically rubbing his fingers together in an attempt to pick up the line. "Well, I… let's see what happened there. That's too bad. I don't know what happened. Maybe Boz can try calling me again."
Nope. Despite multiple attempts, Zuckerberg was left standing on stage twiddling his fingers, as the Meta AI voice digitally crunched to tell him yet another call was incoming that he seemed unable to answer. At one point, Zuckerberg blamed himself for the inability to control the device, but the ringtone continued to play across a deathly-silent hall, despite his best efforts.
Eventually, the Meta head honcho gave up. "I don't know what to tell you guys," he said, eventually resorting to bringing the now much-awaited Boz onstage, amid a seemingly ever-present ringtone and much tittering from the crowd.
I'll be honest, it's a pretty painful watch. As tempting as it is to make fun of Meta's multi-billionaire CEO for the borked demo, those of us who have had to present live ourselves will have our head in our hands, as I have while writing this article. It seems the Ray-Ban Meta glasses could do with some work, and while the tech looks very impressive on paper, the demo appears to have revealed some serious flaws in the implementation.
I can't imagine many will be rushing to order a pair after this particular demonstration, but I can't help but think of another old showbiz cliché: There's no such thing as bad PR. We're all talking about it at least, and that's the main thing, eh Zuck?
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
