TL;DRApple is aiming for a WWDC 2027 smart glasses unveil and is debating whether to include a camera amid the privacy backlash Meta created
Apple is currently aiming to unveil its first smart glasses at next June’s Worldwide Developers Conference, with a consumer release by the end of 2027, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. But the company’s engineering and marketing teams are still wrestling with a question that will define the product: whether its glasses should include a camera at all. The teams developing the device, code-named N50, within Apple’s Vision hardware group see privacy as the top priority, Gurman reported on Saturday.
That caution is a direct response to the backlash Meta created. Meta has sold more than seven million pairs of its Ray-Ban smart glasses, but the product’s camera has become a lightning rod for privacy complaints, with women being secretly filmed in public and Kenyan data workers reporting they were asked to review intimate footage captured by the devices. Apple executives are acutely aware that simply entering the same category risks undermining a privacy reputation the company has spent more than a decade building.
Apple is planning safeguards that go beyond what Meta and Samsung have offered. The company will favour on-device processing, eschew facial recognition, and avoid anything resembling Meta’s proposed “super-sensing” mode, which would continuously analyse a wearer’s surroundings without activating the recording indicator light. Apple also does not plan to follow Meta’s practice of having contractors review footage captured by its glasses, having already dealt with a similar controversy around its Siri voice assistant.
