A new advertisement for Kylie Jenner’s special edition Meta Glasses is a stylized, first-person view of a morning in her life. Through Jenner’s $399 lenses, we watch as she murmurs directions to her staff: placement for a large “Beetlejuice”-esque statue, whether she likes the feeling of a moisturizer sample. We watch as she applies cuticle oil to her manicured set overlooking a pool being skimmed by a smiling older man, leafs through clothing hanging in her closet and through a pile of fan letters, makes a green smoothie.
The glasses, called Meta Starfire Kylie edition, are part of Meta’s first line of in-house, celebrity-branded smart glasses. Jenner told Elle Magazine that she was involved in “everything” from campaign to design. She even lent her voice to the artificial intelligence for the product. “You ask. Kylie answers,” Meta’s website promises.
Jenner provides a powerful combination of extremely lucrative marketing techniques: Instagrammable aspiration and pseudo-accessibility.
Jenner and her Starfires (which are priced at $100 more than most of Meta’s models) are a boon for Mark Zuckerberg, whose Meta Glasses have long been marred by controversy and consumer criticism. Jenner provides a powerful combination of extremely lucrative marketing techniques: Instagrammable aspiration and pseudo-accessibility. More crucially, though, as one of the most familiar faces on the internet, she normalizes the product. Jenner is not merely making Meta Glasses more palatable but surveillance technology writ large.
Released in 2021 via a partnership with Ray-Ban, Meta Glasses debuted as a competitor to Google Glass. Wearables of this ilk have long been a preoccupation of Silicon Valley and of Zuckerberg.
“I don’t think phones are going to go away completely, but I do think that glasses will be the next major computing device. Today, when I’m sitting at my desk with a computer in front of me, I still reach for my phone to do a lot of things. […] So, I think eventually the question might be: “Why should I lug around my phone, when I have my glasses?” Zuckerberg recently said for a feature in the enterprise newsletter “Feed Me” from Emily Sundberg.
Meta Glasses have been inundated with complaints and lawsuits since their launch. They have been reportedly used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on duty. They have also been used by predatory manosphere influencers recording women without consent. Two Swedish newspapers, Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten, reported that subcontractors based in Nairobi, Kenya, who were hired to monitor content to help train AI, have access to highly sensitive footage. One person interviewed in the report said, “In some videos you can see someone going to the toilet, or getting undressed. […] I don’t think they know, because if they knew they wouldn’t be recording.”
Meta has long understood that technology, even highly controversial technology like, say, a website used for rating the appearance of college-aged women, can only flourish and integrate with cultural endorsement. While Jenner and Zuckerberg profit, the rest of us are left with fewer rights and eroded consent that is only getting more normalized. We are watching, from behind the slim oval frames Jenner sold us as our privacy becomes commodified.
Indeed, Jenner is not the first or only celebrity to lend her voice to a Meta product. John Cena, Keegan Michael Key, Awkwafina, Kristen Bell, and, I am sad to say, Dame Judy Dench, have all voiced Meta AI assistant. Jenner’s positioning feels different, given that her brand was built on selling access and capitalizing on parasocial dynamics.
The glasses come with one privacy safeguard that is visible: a small LED light that flashes once to indicate a photo and pulses to indicate a video. A quick search on YouTube garners video after video with instructions on just how quick and easy it is to disable the light. The top results have hundreds of thousands of views. One Reddit user posting as “coedshowers” said it takes just 10 or 20 minutes to manually disable a light. Others offer directions to hack the glasses, some sell a specially designed vinyl sticker to conceal the light.
Legally, there is no federal obligation to keep the light intact. Last month, Rep. Joe Ciresi, D-Penn., introduced legislation in his state that would require smart glasses and wearable recording devices to have a “visual indicator.” Ciresi’s bill also says any retailers would be “required to clearly inform users of Pennsylvania’s recording laws.”
According to a Wired report, Zuckerberg had plans to integrate Meta Glasses with a new AI facial recognition technology called “NameTag,” which would allow a wearer to identify the name of anyone in the vicinity. The magazine reported that Meta installed the software on more than 50 million devices before an official release. Although Meta halted the rollout and removed the technology from its glasses following the report, it’s still alarming. You don’t need a particularly active imagination or clairvoyance to see how catastrophic it could be, from unauthorized filming to harassment to the weaponization of the identities of protestors at a march.
Jenner’s partnership with Meta suggests that the battle over privacy and consent will not be won or lost in Silicon Valley or in the halls of Congress. It will be decided by us.
Jenner’s partnership with Meta suggests that the battle over privacy and consent will not be won or lost in Silicon Valley or in the halls of Congress. It will be decided by us, by what we allow to carry social cache and cultural relevance. Ultimately, it will be decided by what we decide to buy. If recent culture, dominated by conspicuous consumption and the attention economy, is any indicator, I fear we are already losing.
What irks me most about Jenner’s Meta Glasses advertisement is the billboard that occupies the last few frames. In it, we see Jenner’s famous face wearing a pixelated version of the new glasses. A pixelated or blurred image in media has long implied adult content or privacy. So, this indicates what, exactly? That Jenner’s glasses will see private content? That she has access to the commodity of privacy? It is hard for me to see this as anything other than brazen mockery, as if Meta knows what these glasses can been used for, and as if Jenner knows it too. I can’t help but feel that our privacy and security are being treated as a joke. A big ‘ol money making joke.
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