At Meta Connect 2025, live demonstrations of the new Ray-Ban Display smart glasses and neural wristband ran into serious issues, which according to Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, were caused by software bugs and overloading of the system (via The Verge).
One of the more awkward moments came early in the presentation when chef and influencer Jack Mancuso was asked to prepare a Korean-inspired steak sauce with help from the glasses’ AI assistant.
Instead of following the cooking steps as requested, Mancuso got ingredient suggestions then questions were repeated unanswered by the system. The AI apparently skipped ahead without guiding through the process correctly, leading to confusion onstage, laughter in the audience and the demo being cut short.
The second failure happened later during a demonstration of the wristband that is meant to control the glasses via gestures and muscle signals. When Zuckerberg attempted to accept a video call using the new system the notification failed to appear because the display had gone to sleep at that moment. Multiple attempts to respond to the call did not work.
Bosworth offered explanations for why the demos failed while emphasizing that the underlying product still works. He described how one glitch was essentially a distributed denial of service event inside the building when many units of the glasses attempted to activate live AI simultaneously.
Even though Meta struggled onstage, observers noted the technology still impressed in many respects. The glasses include a heads-up display built into one lens, live translation, subtitles, gesture control via the neural wristband, and other smart features meant to bridge the gap between a phone screen and wearable AI.
The Ray-Ban Display glasses are priced at around $799 (about $1,100 CAD) in the US, and are set to launch later this month. They are expected to release in Canada, along with France, Italy, and the UK, in early 2026.
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This is pretty good for a 1st gen version. I would like to see what Samsung has for later this year. If I want one, I probably wait for an Apple version with better privacy control…in about 5 years..lol