Apple pushes smart glasses to WWDC 2027 after Meta's privacy scandal forces a rethink

Apple's first smart glasses won't arrive until at least June 2027, and Meta's ongoing privacy scandal is a direct reason why. Bloomberg Power On reporter Mark Gurman confirmed the WWDC 2027 target while revealing that Apple has put its camera feature plans on ice — the company simply cannot afford to ship a product that lands it in the same mess Meta is in right now.

The Meta problem

In February 2026, Kenyan contractors working on AI annotation for Meta reported that their work involved reviewing intimate footage captured by Ray-Ban smart glasses without users' knowledge. A class action lawsuit followed on March 5, 2026, filed in the Northern District of California, alleging Meta had marketed the glasses as "designed for privacy, controlled by you" while shipping footage overseas for processing. The UK's Information Commissioner's Office wrote to Meta the same day demanding urgent clarification on GDPR compliance.

The case exposed a structural problem with always-on camera glasses: bystanders have no way of knowing they're being recorded, and no practical way to object. For a product category that depends on social acceptability, that's a serious threat.

Apple's camera dilemma

Apple has spent more than a decade building a brand identity around privacy. Repeating Meta's mistake would be reputationally catastrophic, so the company is taking its time — but the fix isn't straightforward.

Gurman reports Apple is considering two options: drop cameras from the glasses entirely, or restrict them so they can't capture user-initiated photos or video, functioning only as the eyes of Siri's Visual Intelligence system. The second option was always Apple's core vision for the product anyway.

The trouble is that removing cameras would strip out the feature that made Meta's Ray-Bans a genuine hit. First-person video capture is what consumers actually use those glasses for. Cameraless rivals like Even Realities are raising capital on a privacy-first pitch, but it's an open question whether that's a mass-market proposition.

As the Recording Law class action analysis of the Meta lawsuit makes clear, the legal and reputational stakes for getting this wrong are high. Apple's delay suggests it hasn't settled on an answer yet — but the direction is unmistakable: cameras, if they survive at all, will be on a very short leash.