Meta's AI Glasses Debut Marred by Live Demo Failures at Connect 2025

Meta's New Smart Glasses Got a Subtle Name Change. It Speaks Volumes About What's Wrong With Them

Having left competitors in the shade by adhering to vital lessons on what works on your face, Mark Zuckerberg has reverted to old habits with Meta Ray-Ban Display -- and that's not good. In the early days of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg and his team famously adopted the motto "Move fast and break things." Posters with the phrase reportedly adorned the company's Silicon Valley headquarters, alongside other, similar sentiments like "Done is better than perfect," and "Fail quicker." The focus for the young company was clear: Being first was more important than getting it right first time. As the company grew, Zuckerberg -- in an interview with WIRED -- started to distance himself from, or at least temper, those mantras. But with Wednesday's announcement of the Meta Ray-Ban Display smart glasses, it feels like some of that old mentality might have started to creep back in. "Our goal is to build great-looking glasses that deliver personal superintelligence," said Zuckerberg yesterday at the very start of the Meta Connect event. He then immediately outlined some "clear values" that Meta holds sacrosanct for smart glasses. Number-one for Zuckerberg was "they need to to be great glasses first" with "refined aesthetics" that "shave every millimeter" from the hardware. No doubt Meta has shaved every millimeter it can from its new flagship specs, but in a rush to fully realize these next-gen glasses it looks like Meta has broken that primary value right out the gate. I got a chance to demo the Meta Ray-Ban Display, ahead of Meta Connect, at a preview event in London. The big news is they feature a small display built into the right lens that gives users visual prompts and guidance. They come with a wristband that understands hand gestures, which can be used to interact with the things displayed on the screen. Meta has labeled them the "world's most advanced AI glasses," and having tried them, it's easy to agree. They are undoubtedly impressive, and I think most people who get to try them will like them.

'That's Too Bad.' Multiple Live AI Demos Fail at Meta Connect

CEO Mark Zuckerberg gives a live demo on stage at Connect (Credit: Meta) Don't miss out on our latest stories. Add PCMag as a preferred source on Google It was a rough night for Meta after the company botched two onstage demos of its latest smart glasses at its annual Connect conference. The idea behind the specs is that a live AI assistant can see what's in front of the wearer and answer questions about it, allowing people to "stay present in the moment, while getting access to all these AI capabilities that make you smarter," says CEO Mark Zuckerberg. That's hard to do with glitchy tech. The first flop happened when an Instagram influencer, shown on the stage via a video call, asked the AI to help him prepare a Korean sauce. Before the demo started, Zuckerberg noted the company is still working through some "major technology challenges" regarding Live AI, particularly the ability to have access to it all day. To start, it'll be available for only an hour or two at a time. "Hey Meta, start Live AI," the influencer says. The AI accurately determines he has ingredients and empty bowls in front of him, and is ready to start cooking. After some small talk, the influencer asks the AI how to make a Korean-inspired steak sauce. The AI begins talking and the influencer interjects with a more specific question, "What do I do first?" The ability to interject and speak more fluidly to an AI, as someone would to a human, has been a focus of voice technology over the past two years. It's something OpenAI touts about its Voice Mode, Apple improved with Siri last year, and Amazon added to Alexa+. Meta's AI got tripped up by the interjection and did not register what the influencer said, so he repeated it. When the AI finally responded, it inaccurately assessed that he'd already combined some ingredients, which he had not touched. "You've already combined the base ingredients, so now grate a pear to add to the sauce," says the robotic female voice. The would-be chef awkwardly smiles, taps the glasses to reset, and asks," What do I do first?" again. The crowd begins to laugh. "Sorry, I think the Wi-Fi might be messed up," he says. "Back to you, Mark." Zuckerberg also blames the Wi-Fi, but keeps a cool head for the most part. But the second time the tech flubs, he was visibly upset. This time, Zuckerberg performed the demo himself, showcasing the new neural band technology, which he calls a "huge scientific leap." The glasses pair with a wristband, Meta's innovation to replace a keyboard and mouse for smart glasses. It interprets small muscle movements in the wrist and controls the glasses. A main use for the neural band is sending text messages, which Zuckerberg calls "one of the most important and frequent things we do on our phones." He pulls up a text thread on his glasses, which the crowd can see, and shows how he can "type" by writing the letters on a table with his hand. The glasses interpret his hand motions and input the text in the chat box. Things go awry when Zuckerberg attempts to answer a call on his glasses with the neural band by tapping his fingers in a quick motion. He has Meta CTO Andrew "Boz" Bosworth call him on WhatsApp. The call comes in on the glasses, but Zuckerberg cannot successfully answer it with his fingers. "That's too bad. I don't know what happened," he says after the first attempt. "Umm...maybe Boz can try calling me again." He gets a second call from Boz. "Alright, I'm going to pick this up with my neural band," Zuckerberg says, spastically moving his fingers in a last-ditch effort, but it fails again. "It happens," he acknowledges. Boz tried calling four times, and Zuckerberg concluded it was his fault: "I keep messing this up." Boz then called for a fifth and final time, and Zuckerberg still could not answer the call with the neural band. Defeated, he concluded," I don't know what to tell you guys. We're just going to go to the next thing, and I hope that will work." Luckily, the next time Zuckerberg tries to use the neural band, by quickly tapping his fingers together to pull up a song on Spotify, it works. Neither Meta nor Zuckerberg has commented on the demos post-event, as Zuckerberg did earlier this month to acknowledge another awkward moment when he was caught on a hot mic at the White House.

Mark Zuckerberg laughs after the live demo of his new $800 smart glasses goes horribly wrong | Fortune

But Wednesday's grand unveiling was overshadowed by a live on‑stage demo that repeatedly failed, culminating in Mark Zuckerberg being unable to answer a video call via the new neural wristband while assuring the audience "it's all good" amid Wi‑Fi excuses. Meta is pushing a tiered family of AI glasses that range from camera‑ and audio‑first models to a new pair with an integrated transparent display, all centered on hands‑free capture, Meta AI assistance, and voice or wristband control. The Ray‑Ban Display adds a see‑through lens readout and relies on a neural wristband for subtle gesture control, marking Meta's first consumer smart glasses with a built‑in display. Meta AI powers voice queries, hands‑free photos and video, real‑time translation, and context‑aware assistance across the lineup, with the Display model extending glanceable interactions into the lens itself. A neural wristband enables subtle finger gestures for control on the Display glasses, and Meta also highlighted "conversation focus" audio processing to better hear voices in live environments. Early hands‑on coverage has been notably upbeat for the Display glasses, with one reviewer from The Verge calling them the best smart glasses tried to date and another saying they "feel like the future," while also noting they're the product to beat for the category. Broader coverage praised Gen 2's practical upgrades and battery gains, but also flagged the high‑profile live AI demo faltered on stage, tempering the otherwise strong showing. During a cooking segment, the glasses' live AI misinterpreted prompts, insisted base ingredients were already combined, and suggested steps for a sauce that hadn't been started before the host punted back to Zuckerberg citing Wi‑Fi issues, prompting his "it's all good" reassurance to a laughing crowd. "The irony of all this whole thing is that you spend years making technology and then the Wi-Fi on the day kinda... catches you," Zuckerberg said, laughing. "We'll go check out what he made later." Later, while wearing Ray‑Ban Meta glasses and the neural wristband, Zuckerberg repeatedly failed to answer an incoming video call on stage despite multiple attempts, eventually giving up as the ringtone continued, with other outlets noting similar struggles during the event. Fortune has reported on Meta's broader smart‑device roadmap, including a "Hypernova" pair of smart glasses expected to use a wristband controller akin to the company's ambitious Orion AR project, underscoring Meta's long‑term bet on neural wrist interfaces across its wearables. That wrist‑first interaction model mirrors the neural-band approach Meta just showcased for the Ray‑Ban Display, suggesting strategic consistency between near‑term products and pipeline devices.

Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses glitch twice during live demo

"We're just gonna go to the next thing that we wanted to show and hope that will work," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said after a glitch cut off Meta's big demo, encompassing some stark moments of tension during the tech giant's event. In a kickoff of the company's two-day Meta Connect event at the company's headquarters on Wednesday, Zuckerberg shared the latest updates to Meta's AI glasses. But during his keynote address, Meta's AI glasses glitched not once -- but twice. The first time was when Zuckerberg was introducing an improved version of Live AI. He said users can now use the feature "for about an hour or two straight." To show how this works, Zuckerberg introduced cooking content creator Jack Mancuso to do a live demo. Mancuso asked Live AI to help him make a Korean-inspired steak sauce. The tech began to glitch after he asked what step he should do first, with the AI glasses jumping ahead in the recipe by several steps. After Mancuso repeated his question, the AI glitched again. After laughs from the crowd, Mancuso said that the "WiFi might be messed up" before throwing it back to Zuckerberg. The second glasses-related glitch happened while Zuckerberg was showing off the Meta Ray-Ban Display to the crowd. The new AI glasses use a Meta Neural Band, which Zuckerberg said replaces the "keyboard, mouse, touchscreen, buttons, dials" with the "ability to send signals from your brain with little muscle movements" that the band would pick up so users can "silently control" the glasses with "barely perceptible movements." Zuckerberg emphasized that the new glasses aren't "a prototype"; they're "ready to go." He said people will be able to buy the glasses, which start at $799, "in a couple weeks." As he continued to amp up the crowd about Meta's AI glasses, Zuckerberg presented two options: slides or a live demo. "Let's do it live," Zuckerberg said. He kicked the demo off by showing the room how the glasses can send and receive messages. Zuckerberg successfully received a message from Meta chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth, and Zuckerberg sent a message back in response. But the demo took a turn when Bosworth attempted to video call Zuckerberg -- to no avail. "I promise you, no one is more upset about this than I am," Bosworth said. "This is my team that now has to go debug why this didn't work on the stage." Meta Connect promised the future of AI glasses. Instead, it offered a seemingly bad internet connection.

Mark Zuckerberg Humiliated as AI Glasses Debut Fails in Front of Huge Crowd

On Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a slew of new augmented reality glasses, including what he claimed to be the "first AI glasses with high resolution," a new $799 version of its Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses that features a tiny screen that's viewable to the wearer. But it didn't take long for the company's MetaConnect 2025 keynote to descend into chaos. The social media giant's demos repeatedly failed, leading to awkward stares, deafening silences, and muted laughter. The poor showing painfully demonstrates that the tech is far from ready, even as companies continue to shove AI into every aspect of our daily lives. The stakes are high. Meta is spending tens of billions of dollars to build out infrastructure and hire industry-leading staff to support AI. Zuckerberg has also repeatedly doubled down on smart glasses being the future of the company, as well as AI-powered "superintelligence" as a whole. "This is one of those special moments where we get to show you something we've poured our lives into," he told the crowd at this week's event. Yet getting the tech to work on stage in front of a huge crowd proved too much, demonstrating once again that there's still a glaring gap between the AI industry's breathless promises and cold, hard reality. According to Zuckerberg's vision of the near future, wearers of Meta's glasses can converse with an AI chatbot to tell them what they're looking at -- or how to do things, like coaching on how to cook a dish. "Let's try it! It's not something I've made before," food content creator Jack Mancuso told Zuckerberg enthusiastically, after the CEO challenged him to make a steak sauce with the help of a new feature called "Live AI." "Can you help me create a Korean-inspired steak sauce?" Mancuso asked his glasses. "What do I do first?" Mancuso interjected after the robotic voice started making suggestions. "What do I do first?" the influencer repeated after several seconds of total silence that followed. "You already combined the base ingredients," the AI told Mancuso, who was standing in front of an empty glass bowl that he hadn't touched yet. A separate attempt by Zuckerberg to make a video call with his glasses ended with him awkwardly trying to explain why it wasn't working. Is this really all Meta has to show for it at this point? If so, the company still has an immense amount to to show if it wants to justify its enormous spending spree.

Mark Zuckerberg's smart glasses demo goes wrong

A launch event for Meta's new artificial intelligence (AI) glasses left Mark Zuckerberg red-faced on Wednesday as glitches disrupted his on-stage demonstration. Attempts to show off hands-free calling through the $800 (£586) Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses were aborted after the billionaire Facebook founder failed to take a video call three times. In another segment, Jack Mancuso, a chef and influencer, asked his AI glasses to help with a recipe for a Korean steak sauce. However, the AI chatbot built into the smart glasses failed to answer his questions. Following the mishap, which took place at a launch event in California, Mr Zuckerberg told the audience: "I don't know what to tell you guys. We will go to the next thing and hope that will work. "The irony of the whole thing is you spend years making technology and the Wi-Fi of the day kind of catches you [out]."

'It's all good, it's all good' says Mark Zuckerberg as his catastrophic live demo of Meta's new smart glasses goes horribly wrong: 'You spend years making technology and then the Wi-Fi on the day catches you'

Never work with children or animals, so goes the famous advice for stage performers, entertainers, and anyone having to present something live in front of an audience. Perhaps smart glasses should be added to that list, if yesterday's Meta Connect 2025 livestream is anything to go by -- as the new Ray-Ban Meta glasses took the opportunity to misbehave at almost ever turn. Unveiled to great fanfare and a rapt audience by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the second-generation smart glasses were promised to be capable of "empowering people with new abilities" and said to allow users to "make themselves smarter" thanks to the newly-polished AI functionality. Cool stuff, but when it came to the demos, things didn't exactly go to plan. Switching over to a livestreamed demonstration, displayed to the audience on a gigantic panel at Zuckerberg's side, chef Jack Mancuso attempted to use the Live AI functionality of the smart specs to help them make a Korean-inspired steak sauce. Standing in front of multiple unprepared ingredients (which the glasses appeared to initially recognise) the Meta specs immediately ignored a prompt to help make the sauce, instead listing the ingredients that might go in it. Interrupting, Mancuso asked the AI a reasonable question: "What do I do first?" After a long silence, in which metaphorical pins could be heard dropping in the audience, Mancuso asked again. The AI then merrily informed our now visibly-nervous host that the base of the sauce was already made. Another long pause. "What do I do first?" Mancuso asked once more, to laughter from the audience. "You've already combined the base ingredients," the AI continued, helpfully telling Mancuso to grate a pear into the non-existent sauce. "Alright, I think the Wi-Fi might be messed up" said Mancuso, looking embarrassed. "Back to you Mark." "It's all good, it's all good" said Zuckerberg, amid cheers, laughter, and applause from the crowd. "The irony of all this whole thing is that you spend years making technology and then the Wi-Fi on the day kinda... catches you. We'll go check out what he made later." Still, more demos were yet to come. Later in the presentation, Zuckerberg donned a pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses himself, along with a wristband interface said to be able to control the glasses through muscle movements. "Now, I want to get into this in more detail, we've got two options," said Zuckerberg, laughing nervously. "We've got the slides, or we've got the live demo." At this point, the audience erupted into shouts for the live version, unsurprisingly, along with more laughter. Guess how it went. Zuckerberg was able to respond to a video call request with text via hand movements, which is fairly impressive, but was unable to answer the call itself. "Uh-oh," said the Meta CEO, frantically rubbing his fingers together in an attempt to pick up the line. "Well, I... let's see what happened there. That's too bad. I don't know what happened. Maybe Boz can try calling me again." Nope. Despite multiple attempts, Zuckerberg was left standing on stage twiddling his fingers, as the Meta AI voice digitally crunched to tell him yet another call was incoming that he seemed unable to answer. At one point, Zuckerberg blamed himself for the inability to control the device, but the ringtone continued to play across a deathly-silent hall, despite his best efforts. Eventually, the Meta head honcho gave up. "I don't know what to tell you guys," he said, eventually resorting to bringing the now much-awaited Boz onstage, amid a seemingly ever-present ringtone and much tittering from the crowd. I'll be honest, it's a pretty painful watch. As tempting as it is to make fun of Meta's multi-billionaire CEO for the borked demo, those of us who have had to present live ourselves will have our head in our hands, as I have while writing this article. It seems the Ray-Ban Meta glasses could do with some work, and while the tech looks very impressive on paper, the demo appears to have revealed some serious flaws in the implementation. I can't imagine many will be rushing to order a pair after this particular demonstration, but I can't help but think of another old showbiz cliché: There's no such thing as bad PR. We're all talking about it at least, and that's the main thing, eh Zuck?

Munster Says Meta Will 'Get Heat' For AI Glasses Demo Glitches But Praises Mark Zuckerberg For 'Doing It Live' At Connect 2025: Here's What Happened - Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)

On Wednesday, at Meta Platforms, Inc.'s META Connect 2025 event, Mark Zuckerberg's live demos of new AI-powered glasses stumbled twice onstage, prompting analyst Gene Munster to warn of backlash while applauding the CEO's willingness to showcase products in real time. Live Cooking Demo Goes Off Script Zuckerberg invited food creator Jack Mancuso onstage to demonstrate how the upgraded Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses could assist with cooking. Mancuso asked the AI for step-by-step instructions to make a Korean-inspired steak sauce. Instead of responding directly, the glasses repeated lines about soy sauce and sesame oil, skipping over the basics. Mancuso joked that Wi-Fi was to blame, handing the stage back to Zuckerberg as the audience offered encouragement. "The irony of the whole thing is that you spend years making technology and then the WiFi at the day catches you," Zuckerberg said. See Also: Gene Munster Says Meta's $65 Billion AR/VR Bet Shows Hardware, Software, AI Integration Is 'Really Hard,' Giving Apple More Time On AI Ray-Ban Display Demo Falters The second stumble came during a demo of the Meta Ray-Ban Display, which adds a heads-up display to show notifications and navigation. Using a neural wristband, Zuckerberg tried repeatedly to answer a video call from Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth. The hand motions failed until Bosworth appeared onstage to help. "This WiFi is brutal," Bosworth said. Zuckerberg added, "You practice these things like 100 times, and then, you never know what's going to happen." Munster Reacts To Demo 'Bombs' Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, weighed in on social media after the keynote. "$META will get heat for the demo bombs," he wrote. "I applaud Zuck for 'doing it live.' Bill O'Reilly must be proud." High-Profile Demo Failures Are Not New Meta is not alone in facing awkward onstage moments. In 2019, Tesla's Cybertruck reveal turned infamous when its "armored" windows shattered during a demo. Back in 2010, Steve Jobs struggled with Wi-Fi during an iPhone 4 presentation. In 2023, Google faced backlash after its Bard chatbot delivered an incorrect answer at launch. Such slip-ups can fuel skepticism but also show the challenges of integrating emerging technology into consumer-ready products. Price Action: Meta shares slipped 0.42% to $775.72 on Wednesday but edged up 0.71% in pre-market trading on Thursday, according to Benzinga Pro. Benzinga's Edge Stock Rankings show that META continues on an upward trend across short, medium and long-term horizons, with further performance insights available here. Read Next: Apple May See Fewer Searches In Safari, But Google CEO Sundar Pichai Insists AI Is Fueling Overall Query Growth: 'Far From A Zero-Sum Game' Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Photo courtesy: Frederic Legrand - COMEO / Shutterstock.com METAMeta Platforms Inc$783.250.97%Stock Score Locked: Edge Members Only Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Unlock RankingsEdge RankingsMomentum83.93Growth85.53Quality94.03Value23.55Price TrendShortMediumLongOverviewMarket News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs