Meta’s Smart Glasses Demo Faced Glitches Due to Internal Tech Issues, Not Product Failures
During Meta’s Connect 2025 keynote, CEO Mark Zuckerberg attempted to showcase the company’s latest Ray-Ban smart glasses—but the live demo didn’t go as planned. Two major glitches disrupted the presentation, raising concerns about the product’s reliability. However, Meta’s Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth later clarified that the issues were not product flaws, but rather demo-related failures caused by unusual circumstances.
⚠️ Glitch #1: AI Assistant Malfunction During Cooking Demo
One of the glitches occurred during a live cooking segment. A content creator asked Meta’s AI assistant for a recipe for Korean-inspired steak sauce using the glasses. Instead of providing step-by-step instructions, the AI skipped several steps and continued behaving erratically.
Initially, the presenter suggested that Wi-Fi issues might be to blame. But Bosworth later explained the real cause.
“When he said ‘Hey Meta, start Live AI,’ it activated the AI on every pair of smart glasses in the venue,” Bosworth said.
Since many attendees were wearing the glasses at the time, this triggered a flood of AI requests—all routed to a single development server meant only for the demo. As a result, the server was overwhelmed, creating what Bosworth called a self-inflicted DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack.
This issue did not appear during rehearsals because far fewer glasses were active at that time.
📵 Glitch #2: WhatsApp Video Call Demo Failed
The second issue happened when Zuckerberg tried to demonstrate a WhatsApp video call on the smart glasses. The Heads-Up Display (HUD) showed that a call was incoming, but he was unable to answer it.
According to Bosworth, the failure was caused by a rare bug that had never occurred before. At the exact moment the call notification appeared, the display went to sleep. Even after waking the display, the “Answer” option was missing.
Bosworth confirmed that Meta has since fixed the bug and emphasized that video calling is a working feature of the glasses.
“We know how to do video calling. It was just a missed opportunity to show it live on stage,” he said.