In this new piece in the series, we examine the advertising strategies Meta uses to promote its AI-powered smart glasses. Featured across various media, particularly social media platforms, these campaigns draw on notions of innovation, convenience, modernity, and even luxury to construct a desirable image of the product, particularly among female audiences. At the same time, fundamental issues relating to privacy, surveillance, and data protection are pushed into the background, despite being explored in greater depth in the previous piece.

In September 2023, Meta announced a new generation of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which went on sale in October of that year. The device combines Ray-Ban’s traditional design with photo and video capture capabilities, livestreaming, and, initially in the United States, integration with Meta AI. In Brazil, the glasses were officially launched in the second half of 2025.

Since the launch, one of the company’s main promotional strategies has been to associate the device with famous female celebrities linked to the world of fashion, a phenomenon known as “taste-washing.” Popularized by The New Yorker magazine, the term describes a trend in recent years in which major technology companies have increasingly aligned themselves with haute couture and luxury lifestyle culture. This is a clear attempt to shift public attention away from the problems associated with the rapid development of new technologies, including disinformation, vigilantism, labor precarity, and the replacement of human workers.

In the United States, influencer Kylie Jenner, who has more than 380 million Instagram followers, was selected as the face of an advertising campaign. In addition, her voice was licensed for the AI integrated into the glasses models developed with her involvement, meaning that her voice responds to users’ commands. Jenner’s selection has also been seen as a strategy to appeal more directly to female audiences.

In South Korea, singer Lisa, a member of the group Blackpink, has also collaborated on exclusive models. In Brazil, actress Bruna Marquezine was selected to promote the AI-powered glasses. In an Instagram post, she appears wearing the device alongside the caption: “seeing the future through different lenses.”

Image: Google Images (2026). 

Image: Instagram (2026)

In addition to these campaigns, several influencers and celebrities, including Tiago Iorc, Lore Improta, Caju, and Paolla Oliveira, have been hired to produce promotional content showcasing the glasses’ features in everyday situations. The videos highlight the ability to record content hands-free, translate languages while traveling, describe surroundings, and perform tasks in a supposedly more practical and versatile way. All of this is presented through a cool aesthetic featuring young, wealthy, and successful people.

Within this constructed imaginary, consumers acquire not only a product and its functionalities but also the social meanings, values, and promises of distinction associated with it. In this context, we can draw on the concept of commodity fetishism, formulated by Karl Marx. In Marxist critique, as discussed by Pimenta and Alencar (2018), commodity fetishism refers to the process through which the social relations underlying the production and circulation of commodities are obscured, while products come to appear as bearers of value and qualities of their own.

The glasses are presented as an advanced technology to be incorporated into everyday life, capable of enhancing personal and professional performance. The advertising discourse surrounding these devices not only fetishizes the product by attributing qualities and meanings that extend beyond its material utility, but also projects a future in which the experience of navigating the world is increasingly mediated by technology, while concealing its material contradictions and structural problems (Pimenta & Alencar, 2018). Within this framework, issues such as privacy, consent, and the limits of surveillance tend to be downplayed in the face of promises of convenience, innovation, and social prestige.

The marketing surrounding these products thus seeks to shift attention away from the social, economic, and political relations involved in the production and use of technology and toward the qualities that appear to be intrinsic to the device. The marketing surrounding these products thus seeks to shift attention away from the social, economic, and political relations involved in the production and use of technology and toward the qualities that appear to be inherent to the device itself. The aim is to foster a sense of social and emotional identification with the product, discouraging users and consumers from questioning the problems discussed above.

By emphasizing individual benefits and aesthetic appeal, these campaigns help normalize the integration of these devices into everyday life and stimulate consumer desire, presenting them as accessories that reflect the lifestyle of the modern individual: someone who keeps up with the latest trends, has refined taste, embraces technological innovation, and constantly shares experiences on social media. In doing so, the implications of using these devices, particularly with regard to consent, privacy, and the unauthorized capture of images, tend to remain in the background.

In response to Meta’s advertising narrative, the protests organized by the activist group Everyone Hates Elon attracted international attention in July 2026, drawing attention to the risks associated with the use of these glasses. In one of the group’s sponsored advertisements, influencer Kylie Jenner’s image is used in an optical illusion that transforms the campaign’s aesthetic into a critique of surveillance, accompanied by the phrase “Meta: We’re always watching”:

Image: Google Images (2026)

In another, an image of Jeffrey Epstein, a businessman widely known for running an extensive sex trafficking network involving the abuse of children and adolescents, is paired with the provocative tagline “Glasses for people who don’t do consent,” as shown below:

Image: Google Images (2026)

More than simply denouncing potential abusive uses, these initiatives are important because they challenge the (almost) automatic normalization of technology as an unquestionable synonym for progress, while making visible the conflicts and power relations that shape it.

For this reason, rather than calling them “smart glasses,” some critics and activists have begun referring to them as “pervert glasses,” associating them with the possibility of recording people without their consent and facilitating harassment, particularly against women and girls. It is therefore no coincidence that Meta’s advertising campaigns seek to appeal especially to this audience, making the glasses more palatable precisely to the segment of the population most likely to challenge the use of these accessories, given that women and girls are among the primary targets of their potential misuse. 

As discussed in previous pieces in this series, the problem with Meta’s glasses lies not simply in their ability to record images in real time, a feature already available on smartphones and digital cameras, for example, but primarily in their ability to do so discreetly, without the people being recorded realizing it. This feature can increase the vulnerability of women and girls in public spaces by making it easier to capture and circulate images without consent.

A woman walking down the street, using public transportation, attending a medical appointment, exercising, or simply going about her daily routine may be at risk of having her image captured without even noticing that she is being recorded. Being present in a shared space does not amount to granting permission to be filmed or having one’s image exposed. The right to move freely must not be confused with unrestricted access to other people’s bodies and images, regardless of whether malicious intent is involved.

In a recent case that made national headlines, a gynecologist was arrested in Salvador, Bahia, in July 2026, on suspicion of using camera-equipped glasses to record a patient during a medical consultation. In addition, cases have been reported in other countries in which content creators have used these devices to film women without their knowledge, claiming to teach other men dating and seduction techniques, while also charging for access to this content.

Against this troubling backdrop, it is necessary to recognize that wearable recording technologies can create new conditions for reproducing and intensifying historical forms of violence against women and girls, expanding opportunities for the exploitation and sexualization of images without consent.

A study by the University of Sydney analyzed 350 videos posted between 2023 and 2026 featuring people wearing these glasses and found that approximately 60% of the interactions examined were classified as potential cases of harassment. Although these devices are marketed as tools for autonomy, convenience, and innovation, their uses and effects cannot be separated from the gender inequalities and power relations that permeate society.

For this reason, the responsibility of companies that develop and market these technologies must extend beyond ensuring the devices’ technical security. As Strohmayer, Slupska, and Bellini (2021) argue, it is necessary to consider abusability, that is, the possibility that technological systems may be appropriated by third parties to enable abusive practices and cause harm.

This requires companies to anticipate the risks associated with the products they bring to market and incorporate preventive and protective measures from the design stage, taking into account not only intended uses but also potential malicious uses. In the case of Meta’s glasses, this means acknowledging that discreet recording capabilities can facilitate privacy violations and forms of harassment, with particularly significant impacts on women and girls.

Therefore, by promoting smart glasses as accessories associated with a desirable lifestyle, Meta helps consolidate a narrative in which technological innovation is presented as a value in itself, while its social consequences remain largely invisible. Discussing AI-powered glasses consequently requires looking beyond their functionalities to consider the forms of violence and gender disparities that these devices may reproduce or intensify.

For this reason, it is essential to contest the prevailing narrative surrounding these new accessories and draw attention to the problems embedded in these devices, which is one of the main objectives of this series of articles. Building this counter-narrative is therefore crucial to demanding that technological innovation be discussed and reframed in light of the rights and autonomy of the people potentially affected by it.

References:

Pimenta, M. T. da R., & Alencar, M. da G. S. P. de. (2018). The twenty-first century under the aegis of the fetishism of information and communication technologies. Revista Brasileira de Biblioteconomia e Documentação, 14(3), 210–236. Retrieved from https://rbbd.febab.org.br/rbbd/article/view/1087.

STROHMAYER, Angelika; SLUPSKA, Julia; BELLINI, Rosanna; et al. Trust and Abusability Toolkit: Centering Safety in Human-Data Interactions. 2021.

Rhaiana Valois

Attorney, currently pursuing a postgraduate specialization in Brazil’s General Data Protection Law (LGPD) at Legale Educacional, and holds an LL.B. from the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE). She serves as Secretary of the Artificial Intelligence Subcommittee of the Commission on Technology and Information Law (CDTI) of the Pernambuco Bar Association (OAB/PE).

She participated in the 41st Exchange Program of the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (PinCade) and in the training program of the Center for the Analysis of Freedom and Authoritarianism (LAUT). A former member of the Legal Design Lab at the University of São Paulo (USP), she also completed a postgraduate internship at the Civil Appeals Unit of the Public Defender’s Office of Pernambuco (DPPE).

She is currently a researcher at the Institute for Research on Law and Technology of Recife (IP.rec), working on issues related to digital platform regulation, gender, Artificial Intelligence, cryptography, and the rights of children and adolescents.