Lorde says AI glasses are “not sexy”

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Image Credits:Joseph Okpako/WireImage / Getty Images

4:10 PM PDT · July 14, 2026

While Kylie Jenner serves arsenic a quality billboard for Meta’s AI glasses, popular prima Lorde isn’t buying it.

During a acceptable astatine the Mad Cool Festival successful Madrid past week, Lorde had immoderate prime words astir the caller technology, which galore information experts person deemed a privacy nightmare.

“Increasingly successful our world, it gets harder and harder to cognize what is real,” Lorde told the audience. “You don’t cognize if idiosyncratic is wearing sunglasses, oregon if they’re wearing those f–ed up, f–ing [AI glasses]. Can I conscionable say, for the record, f— the glasses. Don’t get the glasses. Not sexy.”

Lorde has written earlier astir throwing her telephone into the ocean, but this was adjacent level.

Lorde was perchance moved to remark connected the latest trends successful tech due to the fact that Ray-Ban, a sponsor of the festival, partners with Meta to marque AI glasses. Lorde besides performed instantly earlier the vocalist Jennie, who is an ambassador for Ray-Ban x Meta’s astute glasses line.

"Increasingly successful our satellite it gets harder and harder to cognize what is real. You don’t cognize if idiosyncratic is wearing sunglasses oregon if they’re wearing those fucked up fucking.… Can I conscionable say, for the record, 'Fuck the Glasses'. Don’t get the glasses. Not sexy"

@lorde successful Madrid. 💯 pic.twitter.com/NylMCifF66

— Lorde hole 🩻🧬⛓️ (@Lorde_fix) July 10, 2026

Lorde isn’t unsocial successful raising concerns. Smart glasses, which travel with cameras and AI features, person been utilized arsenic tools for harassment and extortion. Meta, the astir fashionable astute glasses maker, has said it takes privateness earnestly and builds successful safeguards similar a disposable signaling light, but the institution is facing galore investigations and lawsuits alleging privateness violations. One lawsuit alleges that Kenyan declaration workers were made to ticker graphic videos obtained with the glasses to assistance bid Meta’s AI. (Meta hasn’t publically elaborate its effect to that circumstantial claim.)

None of this has stopped the merchandise from strong sales. EssilorLuxottica, the Ray-Ban maker, said it sold much than 7 cardinal Meta AI glasses successful 2025 — much than triple the astir 2 cardinal units it sold successful 2023 and 2024 combined. Ray-Ban Meta glasses person been specified a deed successful the smart-glasses class that an emboldened Meta keeps expanding the lineup.

But hey, if privateness doesn’t marque radical deliberation doubly astir the glasses, possibly vanity will. Lorde nails it beauteous concisely with her declaration that they’re simply “not sexy.”

The present and now, she added, present that “is sexy.”

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Amanda Silberling is simply a elder writer astatine TechCrunch covering the intersection of exertion and culture. She has besides written for publications similar Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast astir net culture, with subject fabrication writer Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked arsenic a grassroots organizer, depository educator, and movie festival coordinator. She holds a B.A. successful English from the University of Pennsylvania and served arsenic a Princeton successful Asia Fellow successful Laos.

You tin interaction oregon verify outreach from Amanda by emailing amanda@techcrunch.com or via encrypted connection astatine @amanda.100 connected Signal.

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