From Blaming Wi-Fi to Admitting System Flaws: Meta’s Smart Glasses “Glitch” Reveals AI Engineering Challenges

TradingKey - At last week’s Meta Connect conference, Meta unveiled three new smart glasses: the upgraded Ray-Ban Meta, the Ray-Ban Display with a wristband controller, and the Oakley sports model Vanguard. However, live demos repeatedly failed, sparking skepticism about the reliability of its AI features. As of this report, Meta shares were down 0.38% in pre-market trading on Monday.

While CEO Mark Zuckerberg and CTO Andrew Bosworth initially blamed the issues on “Wi-Fi problems,” it was later confirmed that the failures stemmed from a technical error in resource management.

Meta’s Chief Technology Officer, Andrew Bosworth, clarified after the event that the root cause was not network-related, but rather a system design flaw. When presenter Jack Mancuso activated the “Live AI” feature, the system mistakenly triggered AI services across all Ray-Ban Meta glasses in the venue, overwhelming the development server with a flood of simultaneous requests.

Additionally, the planned WhatsApp video call between Zuckerberg and Bosworth failed to connect.

Bosworth explained this was due to a rare “race condition” bug: the glasses’ screen entered sleep mode at the exact moment of the incoming call, and upon waking, failed to properly display the answer interface, resulting in a missed connection. He emphasized that the bug has since been fixed and does not reflect any fundamental flaw in the product’s technology.

While company leaders attempted to downplay the mishaps with humor, the high-profile failures exposed gaps in Meta’s stress testing of complex AI systems and its ability to manage resource allocation under real-time load.

Despite the onstage setbacks, market sentiment toward Meta remains largely unchanged.

BofA Securities maintained its “Buy” rating and $900 price target following the Connect event, highlighting the launch of the new Ray-Ban Display with advanced display technology and gesture-based navigation.

Citizens JMP analyst recently reiterated an “Outperform” rating with a $900 target, noting Meta’s expansion of the Reels ad program — which is showing positive results in boosting non-promoted content visibility.

The consensus view: while the launch was rocky, Meta’s long-term AI and hardware strategy remains intact.