Smart glasses solved the camera problem. The microphone is the one they left.

The smart glasses category just decided which privacy threat to solve, and it picked the visible one. Halliday's $599 G2 ships in September 2026 with no camera, a response to the "pervert glasses" stigma around Meta's camera-equipped Ray-Bans. The category is converging on a single message: drop the lens, keep the listening.

That move names the wrong threat. Wired's report on the Halliday G2 makes the gap plain. The glasses still record audio through always-listening microphones, with no indicator light and no hardware cue that capture is in progress. Halliday's own answer, as Wired reports, is that the wearer should disclose to the room, the same obligation as a phone or a tape recorder. In a meeting of six, the room cannot see whether the wearer just said "start recording" to an AI assistant. The lens was the threat people could see. The microphone is the threat people cannot.

The mechanism generalizes beyond Halliday. A privacy frame that targets the camera reframes the device as a workplace tool while leaving the always-on audio channel with the same disclosure obligation as any recorder, a burden the wearer alone can discharge. Companies shipping camera-less glasses earn the privacy marketing. Bystanders get no equivalent signal. The category did not solve the problem. It solved the one that was easy to photograph.