Kylie Jenner has teamed up with Meta to launch a pair of AI smart glasses. And nothing about this surprises me. In fact, it reads like a page from the tech marketing playbook.
Influential celebs like Kylie partner with tech brands like Meta to make products that might initially seem pointless, ugly or even creepy feel desirable, aspirational and cool.
With celebrity collaborations, the focus is rarely on the tech itself. It’s less about the specs and what a device does, and more about what owning it says about you.
These kinds of collabs aren’t always a success. But if they are, something interesting happens. The product stops feeling pointless or ugly or creepy. At some point, it no longer feels aspirational either. Eventually, it just feels completely normal to own one, or several and then keep upgrading them indefinitely.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. About how we say we’re resistant to certain futures and yet willingly accept them when they’re wrapped up and marketed to us in the right way.
I think part of the reason is we’ve been imagining the future of mass control, mass surveillance all wrong. I bet when most of us picture mass surveillance, we think of something that’s imposed upon us. With great resistance and maybe even violence.
With aesthetics that feel imposing too. This might vary depending on what dystopian sci-fi you’ve seen. But I’m betting it’s grey buildings and CCTV cameras and governments watching our every move from the shadows. Some Orwellian future we’d immediately recognise and instinctively resist.
But it’s unlikely to unfold like that. In fact, I wonder if that old story is actually making us less prepared for the future that’s already arriving.
What if surveillance doesn’t look frightening at all? What if it arrives looking fashionable? Wrapped in a cool pair of sunglasses. Promoted by one of the most influential people on the planet. Shared millions of times across social media because the glasses look really cool.
Well, that possibility certainly feels much more plausible to me today.
We’ve watched this happen with tech before. AirPods, smartwatches, electric cars, these were things we were all unsure about when they first launched.
Over time, many of these devices stopped feeling like new technologies and became lifestyle accessories instead. Once that happens, you stop thinking about the tech at all. It fades into the background of your everyday life.
That might not matter all that much for your beloved AirPods. But AI glasses are different.
They aren’t just glasses that make your life a bit more convenient. Every photo and voice command and place you go and object they recognise and interaction with everyone around you trains and improves AI systems’ understanding of the world.
Which is why it’s starting to feel like the tech that’s designed to collect your data and watch what you and everyone around you does 24/7 doesn’t need to force people to participate. Instead, it just needs to make participation desirable. And eventually, completely normal.
We’ve seen this pattern before. Nobody forced billions of us onto social media. We joined because it seemed useful and fun and, well, because everyone else was there. Many of the big concerns only became obvious later.
But see, AI glasses feel fundamentally different to me because they aren’t just about your decision anymore. You can decide the trade-off is worth it. You can buy into the marketing, wear the glasses and enjoy the convenience.
The people around you don’t get that same choice.
Unlike headphones or a smartwatch, AI glasses have implications for everyone else’s privacy too. And as with so many technologies, the risks are unlikely to be shared equally. Women, girls and marginalised groups already experience disproportionate levels of unwanted attention, harassment and image-based abuse.
Making cameras more ambient and socially invisible will only amplify those problems and make them even harder to protect against.
I think what makes this tricky is not everyone who buys them has bad intentions. The technology does offer genuine benefits, from translation and accessibility to hands-free photography and navigation. But are those benefits really worth the trade-offs?
So even if you’re planning to buy a pair, I’d encourage you to stop for a moment and ask yourself why. Is it because you genuinely want the technology? Or because something else is making it feel desirable?
I guess that’s the age old challenge with marketing. Trying to untangle what seem like your genuine desires from its influence when, by design, it’s not supposed to feel like influence at all.
And you could argue that’s all this is. Isn’t this just how marketing has always worked? You wrap a product in beauty, status and identity and hope people buy it?
Absolutely! However, the difference is most technologies only change the lives of the people who buy them. AI glasses are different. They also change the lives of people who want nothing to do with them. By opting in, you’re opting in for the rest of us too.
In dystopian stories, freedom is obviously taken from us. But what if some of the biggest changes don’t happen that way? What if they happen because we willingly invite them in?
Not because we’re forced to, but because they arrive looking cool, useful and fashionable. Which means by the time they become ordinary, it’s already too late to notice just how much the world around us has changed.
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