Mark Zuckerberg’s much-anticipated demo of Meta’s new AI glasses tanked Wednesday at the Connect 2025 keynote, with glitches playing out in front of a packed audience.
The device, called Meta Ray-Ban Display is priced at $799 and has been pitched as a breakthrough in wearable “agentic AI” with digital assistants that act on behalf of users.
But Zuckerberg’s two demo fails left Meta’s new glasses looking slightly less polished in front of hundreds.
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The keynote, held at Meta’s Silicon Valley headquarters, was billed as the coming-out party for the long-rumored “Hypernova” glasses.
At first, Zuckerberg showed off a live view through the new glasses and replied to texts using small wrist motions. But the showcase went south.
Cooking creator Jack Mancuso joined Zuckerberg onstage to try the glasses’ new LiveAI feature, which is supposed to walk users through recipes step by step.
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One member of the audience, Tech Radar’s Lance Ulanoff said Zuckerberg’s presentation included some very big fails.
“The AI was clearly confused and jumping around,” said Ulanoff.
“The developers tell him to never run live demos, and he just keeps doing it because when you’re at a keynote, there are thousands of people all on the Wi-Fi at the same time, which means things can go wrong.”
According to Ulanoff, other big tech firms don’t do live presentations.
“Apple no longer does live presentations at their keynotes for this reason,” he said.
“They have Tim Cook come out for two seconds, so maybe a minute, and then he goes behind the stage and we watch a pre-made video where they have total control.”
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Instead, the assistant repeatedly skipped ahead, refusing to answer the simple question: “What do I do first?”
After failed attempts, Mancuso blamed the WiFi before tossing the segment back to Zuckerberg.
The second stumble came during a showcase of the Neural Band. Zuckerberg successfully sent and received a text from Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth.
But when Bosworth attempted to initiate a WhatsApp video call, the glasses would not pick it up.
Zuckerberg fumbled with the interface before giving up. Bosworth eventually walked onstage, joking about “brutal WiFi” as the audience laughed.
“You practice these things like a hundred times, and then you never know what’s gonna happen,” Zuckerberg said.
Despite the onstage glitches, Zuckerberg framed the glasses as a leap forward in AI-powered personal technology.
He emphasized that the devices represent Meta’s vision of a future where wearable AI assistants anticipate needs and handle tasks with minimal user effort.
“Mark has enthusiasm, and so he was willing to take the risk, but unfortunately, in a couple of instances, it didn’t go his way,” added Ulanoff.
“I’m sure Mark Zuckerberg felt extremely uncomfortable, but I give him credit for maintaining his calm and making a joke about it all.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Meta for comment.
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