Smart glasses built with artificial intelligence, cameras and voice assistants are making a forceful comeback in consumer technology, with more than seven million pairs sold worldwide in 2025 alone. Meta Platforms has taken an early lead in the new category, while Google, Samsung and Apple are all preparing their own devices.
The newest models are designed to look like ordinary sunglasses or prescription eyewear rather than tech experiments, hiding cameras, microphones, speakers and processors inside conventional-looking frames. Some resemble gadgets from a James Bond film, except the technology is now real and already sold in stores.
The push marks a sharp turnaround from 2013, when Google first tried to launch smart glasses and ran into high prices, limited usefulness and a public backlash over privacy. That device, Google Glass, was pulled from sale in the United Kingdom just seven months after launch. Google is now re-entering the category, and artificial intelligence has changed what the glasses can realistically do.
A digital assistant in front of your eyes
Wearers of today's AI glasses can make phone calls, take photos and video, listen to music and podcasts, translate text in real time and ask questions about whatever is in front of them, without taking a phone out of their pocket.
The features are aimed especially at travellers. In an unfamiliar city, the glasses can act as a wearable travel guide: pulling up information about a landmark, translating a menu, giving directions or identifying an object in the user's field of view. In Paris, for example, a visitor could ask about the roughly 800-year history of the Louvre, have inscriptions or text translated by the camera, or find out that the Eiffel Tower stands 300 metres tall, all without the usual phone search.
Meta's Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses illustrate the approach. With black or other coloured frames, they are difficult to distinguish from ordinary glasses. Users talk to them out loud, creating the odd sight of someone who appears to be talking to themselves on the street. The glasses show nothing on the lens itself; they rely on cameras, microphones, speakers and voice commands, making them, in effect, an extension of the smartphone.
From James Bond to real life
Other models go further. The Even Realities G2 include a discreet head-up display that projects information directly in front of the wearer's eyes. The glasses have already crossed into pop culture as the official gadget of James Bond in the video game "007 First Light."
Behind the novelty lies a bigger commercial bet: whether glasses can become the next major interface for personal technology. If users can get information, communicate, take photos, navigate and interact with AI without repeatedly checking their phone, part of what a smartphone does could gradually shift onto their face.
China leads the way on smart glasses
The market is growing especially fast in China, where the glasses are already used for a wide range of everyday tasks. A university student in Hebei province, for instance, uses Rokid AI glasses for navigation while riding her electric scooter, and photographs product prices in shops with the built-in camera to compare them against online deals.
A far more controversial use has also emerged: cheating on exams. The glasses can scan exam questions and display answers on the lens, offering an almost invisible way to cheat. Some students have gone as far as borrowing or renting devices from classmates specifically to use during exams. Universities have already begun banning smart glasses from major exam halls, opening a new front in how educational institutions respond to wearable AI.
Renting has also become a popular way for consumers in China to try the technology without buying it outright, with a pair available for roughly five euros a day.
Xiaomi, Alibaba and state subsidies
Competition in China is intensifying. Xiaomi, Alibaba and Li Auto have all launched their own smart glasses, aiming to secure a place in what could become one of the next big growth areas in hardware.
The Chinese state has also entered the picture. From 2026, smart glasses are included in a national consumer subsidy programme offering a 15% discount capped at 500 yuan, or roughly 64 euros. Expectations for sales are high: about 2.5 million devices were already sold in the Chinese market the previous year, and the combination of subsidies, AI development and the entry of major tech firms is expected to accelerate growth further.
Cameras you cannot tell are recording
As the capabilities of smart glasses expand, so do concerns about privacy. The built-in camera is at the centre of the debate: someone standing in front of a person wearing smart glasses cannot always tell whether they are being photographed or filmed.
Cases have already surfaced of AI glasses being used to secretly film women without their knowledge or consent, provoking such a strong online backlash that the term "pervert glasses" emerged to describe the practice. The concern is not entirely new, since smartphones have carried cameras for decades. The difference is that smart glasses can record from the wearer's own point of view far more discreetly, without the visible motion of someone raising a phone and pointing it at a face.
Courts begin banning the devices
Regulators have started to respond. Since 20 July, the New York State Unified Court System has banned the use of smart glasses equipped with a camera, microphone or built-in computer in all of its courthouses.
The court system said covert filming or recording could violate New York State's civil rights law. The rule applies to everyone entering a courthouse, regardless of role, including lawyers, litigants, witnesses and court staff. Anyone wearing smart glasses must hand them over to uniformed court officers before entering a courtroom.
Concern had already been building earlier in the year after members of Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg's security detail were seen wearing such glasses during a trial in California. California Superior Court Judge Carolyn Kuhl warned at the time that no recording was permitted in her courtroom and said any violation could bring contempt of court sanctions.
The battle for computing after the smartphone
Smart glasses now face a critical test. For the first time, the technology, the artificial intelligence behind it, consumer interest and investment from major companies have all lined up at once, giving the category a real chance to go mass-market.
The promise is a personal digital assistant that sees what its wearer sees, hears their questions and can offer information exactly when it is needed, without a screen in between. But that same quality is also the biggest source of concern: the more invisible the technology becomes, the harder it is for people nearby to know when it is being used and what data it is collecting.
The market must now balance two competing forces: the prospect of a device that could change how people travel, work, communicate and search for information, against the risk of a technology that can make recording other people and places almost undetectable. The question is no longer simply whether smart glasses can do more than a conventional pair of glasses, but whether they can become useful enough for millions of people to wear every day, and safe enough for everyone else to feel comfortable standing near them.
