Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta Platforms was caught off-guard and blamed the Wi-Fi at the company’s recent launch event for the new Meta Ray-Ban Display smart glasses, following failures during multiple demonstrations.
Billed as an upgrade from previous offerings, with a built-in display and the performance-focused Oakley Meta Vanguard glasses, the device and its gesture interpreting wristband failed to showcase full performance during the live stream, leaving Mark Zuckerberg embarrassed on stage.
The billionaire tech chief was addressing audience at the Connect Developers Conference late on September 17, in Meta’s Menlo Park headquarters.
Meta Ray Ban glasses: AI assistance gets confused
During a segment that sought to feature the glasses’ daily, practical use, Mark Zuckerberg connected with food creator Jack Mancuso, who asked the AI assistant for a recipe for a Korean-inspired steak sauce. Instead of providing step-by-step instructions, the AI on Mancuso’s glasses became confused and started giving out-of-sequence directions.
When prompted to course correct, the AI said that the ingredients were already combined and began suggesting steps for a sauce that was not yet prepped. “You’ve already combined the base ingredients, so now grate the pear,” the AI insisted.
Mancuso tried to redirect the AI multiple times, but he ultimately blamed the problem on a “messed up Wi-Fi” and then volleyed the video feed back to Mark Zuckerberg, who also blamed the gaffe on Wi-Fi.
“The irony of all this whole thing is that you spend years making technology and then the Wi-Fi on the day kinda… catches you. We’ll go check out what he made later,” Mark Zuckerberg said to the humoured crowd.
Meta Ray Ban glasses demo: Call feature, gestures fail to vow
Glitches also occurred when Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated the new neural wristband which when paired with the glasses can detect subtle hand gestures to perform actions such as sending messages, controlling media, and accessing Meta AI.
Show casing the tech, Mark Zuckerberg was able to send a message using the wristband to Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth. However, when Bosworth called back, the interface on Mark Zuckerberg’s end failed to pick up the call, and did not respond to his gestures despite multiple tries.
“That’s too bad, I don’t know what happened… You practice these things like 100 times, and then, you never know what’s going to happen,” Mark Zuckerberg said on the spot. After several attempts, Bosworth eventually walked onto the stage to manage the situation and once again, the “brutal” Wi-Fi connection was blamed.
