Meta’s grand unveiling of its AI-driven smart glasses at Meta Connect 2025 took an unexpected turn as technical difficulties stole the spotlight. The highly anticipated demonstration, meant to showcase the future of wearable computing, quickly became a viral sensation for all the wrong reasons.
The livestreamed event in California featured Mark Zuckerberg presenting the $799 Ray-Ban Display glasses and the innovative neural wristband. The glitches surfaced during a cooking segment with Jack Mancuso, intended to highlight the glasses’ AI assistance in daily life. When Mancuso sought guidance on a Korean-inspired steak sauce, the AI faltered, repeatedly skipping steps and disregarding his queries. “You’ve already combined the base ingredients…” it insisted, despite Mancuso’s attempts to clarify he hadn’t even started. Mancuso attributed the issue to unreliable WiFi before ceding control back to Zuckerberg.
Further complicating matters, the neural wristband, designed for gesture-based video calls using electromyography, also failed. Zuckerberg’s attempts to answer a call from Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth proved futile. Bosworth himself had to appear onstage to salvage the situation. “This WiFi is brutal,” he quipped, acknowledging the debugging challenges ahead for his team.
Despite the setbacks, Zuckerberg remained composed, remarking, “You practice these things like 100 times, and then, you never know what’s going to happen”. Videos of the mishaps rapidly circulated online, garnering millions of views. Analyst Gene Munster, while acknowledging the demo’s challenges, commended Zuckerberg for opting for a live presentation. The Ray-Ban Display glasses, launching September 30, boast a full-color 600×600 resolution display and hands-free operation via muscle movement detection. Meta asserts that despite the hiccups, this technology signifies a major leap forward in AI-powered wearable tech.
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