{"id":622643,"date":"2026-08-05T23:20:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T23:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/622643\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T23:20:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T23:20:19","slug":"kylie-jenners-meta-a-i-glasses-are-bleaker-than-i-thought-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/622643\/","title":{"rendered":"Kylie Jenner\u2019s Meta A.I. glasses are bleaker than I thought possible."},"content":{"rendered":"

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Facial recognition software is everywhere. It\u2019s the most annoying way<\/a> to unlock your iPhone. It\u2019s at the TSA gate<\/a> of every airport in the country. It\u2019s a feature of grocery stores<\/a>, people\u2019s front porches<\/a>, and sporting arenas<\/a>, watching you sit down as you grip your basket of chicken tenders, fountain soda, and wallet and attempt to keep from spilling it all over yourself. That data is saved somewhere and stored forever, whether or not you want it to be.<\/p>\n

Proponents argue that this software lowers wait times<\/a>, reduces crime<\/a>, and will catapult us into a technological utopia where Jeff Bezos can seamlessly drone-strike an Amazon package to our front door during the Netflix ad break we\u2019re watching from the back of the Waymo while simultaneously scrolling Polymarket. There\u2019s a trade-off: We experience a little emotional discomfort by being constantly surveilled, but we are rewarded with the more physical comforts of safety and efficiency. How about if the panopticon had Uber Eats and a never-ending feed<\/a>?<\/p>\n

So there has been understandable backlash when rich celebrities have shown that they are, in fact, exempt from this rule. A Wired investigation found that for Taylor Swift\u2019s comically tacky, star-spangled Americapalooza wedding, held over the Fourth of July weekend<\/a>, Madison Square Garden temporarily shut down<\/a> its facial recognition surveillance system, tech that owner James Dolan has sworn up and down is \u201cvery, very, very useful\u201d for security and instrumental in keeping the arena \u201cthe most secure venue in the country.\u201d The week was then bookended with the announcement of Kylie Jenner\u2019s collaboration<\/a> with Meta\u2019s A.I.-powered pervert glasses, a pair of oval cat-eye sunnies with a built-in Kylie Jenner voice and a tortoiseshell colorway, allowing wearers a fashion statement and the ability to talk to Jenner while they film their loved ones. This followed interviews in which Jenner had spoken about her struggles with constantly being photographed in public. Both stories sparked immediate outcry: Why the fuck does my biometric data have to get farmed? It\u2019s a highly visible display of a painful truth: Not only is privacy no longer a right in an age of surveillance; it\u2019s also very much for sale, bought and sold by the same pool of people who sit in the tax bracket for the richest of the rich.<\/p>\n

Celebrity lives at a strange crossroads, one that has always been familiar with surveillance. It inherently asks us to consume these people and needs us to in order to make money, but sometimes consumers want to unhinge their jaws and eat these stars whole, a frightening and unsettling behavior. It\u2019s a moral issue that many regular people can empathize with, in part because we are too always being watched now. But a celebrity must continue to sell, and that tension can breed incredibly adverse effects<\/a> for everyone involved.<\/p>\n

Both of these famous women have long fought to be humanized while also marketing an obscene amount of stuff<\/a> to us. Jenner has often spoken about the pain of all this attention and her desire to step back to protect her children. The reality is, however, she can\u2019t and won\u2019t; at some point, the bell rings and she must put on her coveralls and shake the pail of lip liners in front of us. Swift has similarly opened up about the decades of harassment and assault she has experienced as a pop star, but inviting an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center contractor<\/a> to your wedding and secretly surveilling your fans<\/a> at a live show make the very real concerns about privacy invasion feel a little one-sided (a critique<\/a> she has faced before). Jenner and Swift want us to know that they struggle just like the rest of us, except for when they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

After all, for how much \u201cwe love a tech moment<\/a>,\u201d Jenner is rarely seen actually wearing the glasses. At a Knicks\u2013Pacers game, she took photos of everything on a digital camera<\/a>, and she wore nonrecording oval cat-eye sunglasses on her Citi Bike date<\/a> with Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet. However, she did post pictures in her Meta glasses collaboration while promoting another collaboration<\/a>, with Frankies Bikinis. Which makes sense, of course, because I, too, am always scrolling my iPad in bed, wearing a leopard-print string bikini and A.I. glasses.<\/p>\n

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\n Steffi Cao
\n Meta\u2019s A.I. Smart Glasses Are Wreaking Havoc in Schools Across the Country. It\u2019s Only Going to Get Worse.
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The phenomenon of celebrities promoting products they don\u2019t use isn\u2019t new\u2014I seriously doubt that Justin Bieber really has his money locked up in Bored Ape NFTs\u2014but this is a unique problem emblematic of a more dangerous trend in tech. The problem here is a classic one: You cannot insist that you are more approximate to the average worker only to align yourself with tech billionaires who have been explicit about wanting to exploit the aforementioned everyone else for profit. Jenner hates the paparazzi for invading her privacy but sees no moral quandary in collecting a check from Mark Zuckerberg, who wants to invade everyone\u2019s privacy<\/a>. Swift\u2019s team deployed facial recognition tracking<\/a> on concertgoers but turned it off for some of the wealthiest and most renowned names at her Madison Square Garden rehearsal dinner. This shows that the technology is neither as safe nor as necessary as someone like Dolan might want you to believe, and that in fact multiple parties stand to gain from your participation.<\/p>\n

Celebrity participation is just one way to make all of this seem more normal, but it\u2019s not. Even if Spider-Man: Brand New Day claims that it\u2019s chill to surveil everyone in New York City because Tom Holland is endearing when he\u2019s sad, even if Kylie Jenner made recording glasses chic, and even if Taylor Swift gets to opt out because she personally has had it rough, it doesn\u2019t make the dissonance around this feel any less uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

Because, frankly, the issues that civilians face from panopticontent are not the same as a global star\u2019s, and they\u2019re only getting worse. Facial recognition has been used to arrest innocent people<\/a> for crimes they didn\u2019t commit<\/a>, harass marginalized communities<\/a>, and assist in the mass deportation<\/a> of immigrants. Meta glasses in particular have been a hotbed for controversy: They\u2019ve been used by men to record women<\/a> without their consent, used by ICE agents<\/a> to video and photograph civilians, and used by adults to covertly surveil children<\/a>. I should note that Meta has attempted to push back against the \u201cpervert glasses\u201d reputation by banning nonconsensual content<\/a> from its platforms and creators<\/a> that violate its policy. The device features a privacy recording light to notify wearers when it\u2019s recording, but modifications available<\/a> all over the internet allow users to sidestep it.<\/p>\n

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    They\u2019re the Most Annoying Creatures on the Planet. You Don\u2019t Know What They\u2019re Going to Unleash on America.
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    The One Luxury That Kylie Jenner and Taylor Swift Can Both Afford\u2014and You Can\u2019t
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    Moreover, this is not even close to the tech\u2019s final form. Apple has plans to release its own competitor wearable<\/a>, although the rollout is being put on ice given the controversy around Meta\u2019s glasses. More police forces are adopting A.I. facial scanners<\/a>; the tech is being piloted in schools<\/a>, buses<\/a>, and stores<\/a> as well. Meta is developing on a pair of glasses that would record all the time<\/a>; it\u2019s also been quietly experimenting with facial recognition: NameTag<\/a>, a software designed to identify people via biometric data stored on users\u2019 phones, was quietly embedded into an update for the Meta glasses back in June. CTO Andrew Bosworth says<\/a> the tech will allay the awkward \u201ccocktail-party problem\u201d of forgetting someone\u2019s name, a solution that might be helpful if it weren\u2019t worsened by the issue of storing a stranger\u2019s biometric data in your own glasses.<\/p>\n

    In a world where celebrities can hold ballooning levels of social and economic capital, Jenner and Swift are once again serving as temperature checks for how much we, as consumers, are willing to put up with when it comes to being surveilled. As much as we might wish otherwise, Kylie Jenner and Taylor Swift are not like us, and we cannot measure their autonomy and power on the same scale as ours. Either you want compassion or you want to avoid harm. But you can\u2019t have it both ways.<\/p>\n

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