What are Meta's smart glasses? Product worn by New Orleans attacker
Meta's smart glasses became a buzzy and popular product in a market that had seen many failures before.
The man who rammed a pickup truck into revelers on New Orleans’ Bourbon Street on New Year’s Day wore Meta smart glasses when he was planning and conducting the attack, the FBI said Sunday.
While there’s no indication that the glasses were essential to the assault, which killed 14 people and wounded dozens more, their use as an aid to carry out a terrorist attack is a disturbing turn for the product, which Meta launched in 2023.
Meta smart glasses are the company’s incursion into an area where Google and Snap had tried and failed: functional eyeglasses that also provide a lot of features that a smartphone would, including a camera, a speaker and an AI assistant that can do things like translate text and search the web for answers to questions. Models retail from $299 to $379 on Meta’s website.
The glasses’ frames are licensed through Ray-Ban, and the tech is provided by Meta. Ray-Ban didn’t respond to a request for comment, and Meta declined to share sales numbers; last year, market research firm IDC estimated that Meta had sold over 730,000 pairs — a rare success in the tough wearable tech market.
In Meta’s earnings call in July, CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed that the glasses were “a bigger hit sooner than we expected” and that demand was “still outpacing our ability to build them.”
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