Pop Star's Festival Rant Puts Privacy Spotlight Back on Meta's Booming Smart Glasses

At the Mad Cool Festival in Madrid last week, pop star Lorde took a break from her setlist to deliver an unscripted broadside against Meta's AI-enabled smart glasses, telling the crowd in no uncertain terms to avoid the product entirely. Standing on a stage sponsored by Ray-Ban — the very brand behind the glasses in question — she questioned how audiences can trust what technology people around them are wearing. 'You don't know if someone is wearing sunglasses, or if they're wearing those f---ed up, f---ing glasses,' she said, before concluding simply: 'Not sexy.' The moment was made all the more pointed by the fact that Lorde performed immediately before Jennie, a Ray-Ban Meta brand ambassador.

The outburst wasn't entirely out of character for the New Zealand artist. Lorde has previously written publicly about her desire to unplug from technology — at one point describing throwing her phone into the ocean — but this on-stage condemnation marked a more direct and confrontational stance toward a specific commercial product. The setting, with Ray-Ban as a festival sponsor and a competing performer doubling as a brand partner in the same lineup, gave the moment an almost theatrical irony that wasn't lost on attendees or social media.

Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses have become one of the most commercially successful wearable tech products in recent memory. EssilorLuxottica, the company that manufactures the Ray-Ban line, reported selling more than 7 million units in 2025 alone — more than triple the combined total sold in 2023 and 2024. That explosive growth has encouraged Meta to continue expanding the product range, and celebrity partnerships with figures like Kylie Jenner have helped normalize the glasses as a fashion accessory as much as a tech gadget.

Despite those numbers, the glasses remain deeply controversial among privacy advocates and legal experts. Security researchers have flagged how the built-in cameras can be used covertly, and the devices have reportedly been connected to incidents of harassment and extortion. Meta has maintained that it takes privacy seriously and points to a visible recording light as a key safeguard, but the company is currently facing multiple investigations and lawsuits alleging privacy violations. One particularly serious lawsuit claims that Kenyan contract workers were forced to watch graphic footage captured with the glasses as part of Meta's AI training pipeline — an allegation Meta has not publicly addressed in detail.

Lorde's comments add a cultural dimension to a debate that has largely been confined to tech policy circles and courtrooms. Whether or not celebrity dissent moves the needle against a product selling in the millions remains to be seen, but her framing — that real intimacy and presence are 'sexy' while surveillance-adjacent wearables are not — taps into a broader anxiety about authenticity and trust in an increasingly mediated world.