Lorde Calls Smart Glasses ‘Not Sexy’ Right on Ray-Ban’s Own Stage

New Zealand singer Lorde stood on a festival stage that Ray-Ban had paid to sponsor and told the crowd to skip smart glasses altogether. She did it on Thursday, July 9, during her headline set at Spain’s Mad Cool Festival in Madrid. She never said Ray-Ban’s name. She didn’t have to.

Minutes later, Blackpink’s Jennie, a global ambassador for Ray-Ban Meta, walked onto the same stage for her own solo set. The overlap landed in the middle of the smart glasses industry’s biggest sales quarter on record, just as lawsuits, a UK privacy inquiry and a run of celebrity pushback stack up against the one feature that made the glasses sell in the first place: nobody can tell they’re cameras.

Ray-Ban Sponsored the Stage Lorde Used Against It

Concertgoers filmed the moment on their phones and had it online within hours. By the next day it had spread across music blogs and tech outlets alike.

Increasingly in our world it gets harder and harder to know what is real. You don’t know if someone is wearing sunglasses or if they’re wearing those fucked up fucking… Can I just say, for the record, fuck the glasses. Don’t get the glasses. Not sexy.

Lorde said it from the stage without naming a brand or a specific pair of glasses. She didn’t need to draw a map. Ray-Ban was one of the festival’s listed sponsors with a promotional presence on-site, and Jennie, a Blackpink member and longtime face of Ray-Ban Meta advertising, performed directly after her on the same stage.

The pairing gave the moment its edge. One of the most-streamed young pop stars alive used her own set to tell fans to stay away from a product the next act on that stage was paid to promote.

Why Are People Calling Them ‘Pervert Glasses’?

The nickname grew out of a wave of covert-filming complaints and a stigma some owners say now follows them into public. It stuck because the same design that made Ray-Ban Meta glasses an unlikely hit, a camera hidden inside an ordinary-looking pair of sunglasses, is exactly what makes it impossible for anyone nearby to know they’re being recorded.

Some owners have started leaving the $299 glasses at home. Several people told Engadget their early excitement about the hardware curdled once strangers online branded anyone wearing them a predator or a creep.

“A lot of men and their behaviors have ruined this product,” a travel creator named Danielle told Engadget, explaining why she now thinks twice before wearing hers outside.

Rapper Tyler the Creator posted his own verdict on Instagram this month, writing that anyone who uses the glasses is a real weirdo and linking to a Wired story on smart glasses and surveillance.

Meta has been recruiting star power in the opposite direction. Last month, Kylie Jenner fronted the campaign for its own $299 glasses that drop Ray-Ban and add Kylie Jenner, built around a Starfire edition she helped design.

Can You Tell if Someone’s Smart Glasses Are Recording?

Most models carry a small LED that lights up while the camera or microphone is active, but it is an easy signal to miss in a crowd, and the law has not caught up either. No published court case has yet tested how recording rules apply to the category.

Most commercially available smart glasses have a visible LED that illuminates during recording, according to a breakdown of state wiretap consent laws from Purdue Global Law School. Eleven states require every party to consent before a private conversation can be recorded, and legal experts told the school that no published case has addressed smart glasses specifically despite the risk.

Ray-Ban Meta’s own policy adds another layer. Voice recordings, photos and video are used by default to help train Meta’s AI models, and the camera and microphone stay active unless a user manually disables the “Hey Meta” wake word.

Meta Still Leads, but Its Share Is Sliding

The category just posted its best quarter yet. Global smart glasses shipments surged 167% year over year in the first quarter of 2026, reaching roughly 2.25 million units, according to IDC (International Data Corporation), a technology market research firm.

IDC forecasts full-year shipments of about 13.6 million units this year, climbing to 27.3 million by 2030. Category revenue is expected to reach $5.1 billion in 2026.

Meta’s own numbers explain why rivals want in. Ray-Ban Meta passed 2 million pairs sold within roughly two years of its October 2023 debut. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said demand was still outpacing the company’s ability to build them, and Meta set a target of selling 10 million pairs a year by the end of 2026.

EssilorLuxottica, the eyewear group that manufactures the frames with Meta, said sales more than tripled in the first half of the year compared with the same period a year earlier, helping push first-half revenue to $16.25 billion, up 7.3%.

Meta is still the runaway leader. But the trend line is bending. Techtimes put Meta’s share at an estimated 82% for the back half of 2025, after Ray-Ban Meta topped seven million pairs sold that year. That is a slide to 69.2% in about two quarters, before Samsung, Google or Apple have shipped a single unit.

A Lawsuit and a Privacy Regulator Are Circling

Meta already faces a US lawsuit and a UK inquiry over how footage from the glasses gets handled once it leaves a user’s face.

“Putting cameras into glasses is an inherent privacy threat, and putting face recognition on the camera and the glasses is an intolerable escalation of that privacy threat,” said Schwartz, a Northeastern University researcher who studies the technology.

A second researcher, Ranganathan, warned the technology could erode public expectations of privacy, changing what a stranger can learn about someone from nothing into what she called “a full dossier.”

The legal exposure is stacking up on several fronts at once:

• US lawsuit: New Jersey resident Gina Bartone and California resident Mateo Canu, represented by the Clarkson Law Firm, accuse Meta of privacy violations and false advertising.
• UK inquiry: The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) opened a probe after reports that workers at a Kenya-based subcontractor reviewed customer footage that included nudity.
• A viral case: A 21-year-old woman named Dilara was filmed without her knowledge by a stranger who struck up a conversation; the clip drew 1.3 million views on TikTok and included her phone number.
• A pattern: A BBC investigation identified dozens of male influencers using the glasses to secretly film women without their consent.

Meta has also drawn fresh complaints this month for limiting a hearing-boost feature called Conversation Focus to three free hours a month on its Ray-Ban and Oakley models, a restriction Cybernews first reported.

Google Glass Already Wrote This Playbook

None of this is new. Google tried to push Google Glass into the mainstream back in 2013, recruiting famous faces of its own to help sell it.

The plan collapsed anyway, and not because of a law or a regulator. It collapsed because nobody wanted to be called a “glasshole” in public.

Smart glasses now sell in the millions instead of the thousands, and the AI running inside them reads far more of the world than Glass ever could. Two of the most-followed young stars alive are pulling in opposite directions on the same category, one fronting its ad campaign, the other telling fans to skip it.

Samsung, Google and Apple Are Walking Into This Anyway

Samsung and Google are entering the category regardless. The two companies gave a first look at jointly developed intelligent eyewear at Google I/O on May 19, working with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker on the frames.

The first collections are due this fall in select markets, audio-only and without a display, built as a companion device for a paired phone.

Apple is working on its own pair under the internal codename N50. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has reported a potential early-2027 launch following a reveal later this year.

Gucci is also said to be preparing a luxury pair of its own, though the brand hasn’t confirmed a timeline.

• What we know: Samsung and Google showed working Galaxy Glasses hardware at Google I/O on May 19, with frames from Gentle Monster and Warby Parker and a launch window set for this fall.
• What we know: The first-generation model skips a display entirely, leaning on audio and a paired phone for everything else.

• What’s unconfirmed: Samsung has not announced pricing; analyst estimates put the display-free model at $379 to $499.
• What’s unconfirmed: Apple hasn’t confirmed the N50 project publicly, and Gucci hasn’t set a release date.

Some in the industry argue the smarter path now is enterprise first: get offices and hospitals comfortable with the hardware before asking the general public to trust it again, Forbes reported.

Ray-Ban Meta will have company on shelves within months. Every brand joining it is entering a market where the loudest reviews lately have nothing to do with battery life.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Lorde Name Ray-Ban or Meta by Name?

No. Lorde never named a brand or a specific product during her set, and her representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Business Insider reported. Fans and press connected the dots because Ray-Ban sponsored the festival and Jennie, a Ray-Ban Meta ambassador, performed right after her set.

What Has Meta Done to Respond to the Backlash?

Meta rolled out an update that disables the camera if someone covers the recording LED, closing one loophole critics had flagged. It has also kept shipping new software, including an update that opened its Ray-Ban Display glasses to outside developers. Critics argue the bigger issue is how much footage and voice data the AI features collect in the first place.

Will Samsung’s and Google’s Smart Glasses Have a Privacy Light?

Yes. Google’s design guidelines for Android XR glasses call for two LED indicators built into the hardware, one facing the wearer and a second facing outward to warn bystanders the moment recording starts.

Does Lorde Have Any Tech Investments of Her Own?

Yes. Lorde recently became an investor in Lume, a music app that competes with Spotify by selling songs on a buy-once, own-forever basis instead of a subscription. Lume, like Lorde, originates from New Zealand.