(Image credit: Future / Tom's Guide)
At a glanceThe Conflict: Even Realities CEO Will Wang is calling out Meta and Google for forcing cameras onto smart glasses just to collect training data for future AI models.The Counter-Strategy: Even Realities' G1 and G2 smart glasses intentionally omit cameras and speakers, focusing instead on a text-based ambient HUD that prioritizes privacy, weight, and battery life.The Escalation: Even Realities has scaled its engineering team from 20 to nearly 400 people, gearing up to challenge Big Tech’s wearable AI dominance directly with its upcoming G3 hardware.While Silicon Valley races to strap cameras, speakers and multimodal surveillance tools onto our faces, one smart glasses maker is picking a fight direct with Big Tech’s entire playbook.Meta, Google and Snap want you to believe that a front-facing camera is essential for the future of AI wearables. Apple’s even rumored to be jumping in on this too. But according to Will Wang, Founder and CEO of Even Realities, their camera obsession isn’t about giving you a better device today — it’s about harvesting your personal life to train their future AI models.Following a major $1 billion valuation round, I sat down with Wang to talk about the design choices behind the Even Realities G2 smart glasses. His message to the tech giants was loud, clear and strikingly defiant.
