Between Samsung, Meta, Amazon, and potentially Apple, it seems like most major tech companies are interested in making a pair of smart glasses. Most, but not all, apparently.
In an interview with journalist Alex Heath, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman didn’t have any positive things to say about the category.
“I find it very uncomfortable talking to people with a camera and a light,” Altman said. Woof.
That’s not a flat-out “never,” but it’s also not the first time Altman has rejected the idea. Last year, Altman said flat out, “I don’t like smart glasses,” in an interview, so with all of that factored in and the company clearly thinking outside the box for its own AI-centric hardware, I wouldn’t rank smart glasses high on the list of likely gadgets in the OpenAI pipeline.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says he hasn’t spoken to Mark Zuckerberg since the Meta CEO poached some of OpenAI’s top engineers. Speaking at the Sun Valley conference, Altman also says he doesn't feel represented by the Democratic Party
[https://t.co/0AuDUJSMdg][pic.twitter.com/WmMXkf4R1y]— Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV)
[July 8, 2025]
To be clear, not all smart glasses have a camera. There are pairs from companies like Even Realities that have a screen, but no speakers or cameras, making them geared toward things like notifications, navigation, and transcription. That format for smart glasses is decidedly the less popular one, though.
Meta’s hardware, which it refers to as “AI glasses,” makes cameras a focal point. On top of including the ability to capture high-res video and photos, Meta emphasizes features like computer vision, which relies on cameras to look at your surroundings and parse them. Samsung and Google’s upcoming pair appear to be more of the same, and while Apple is still mulling its potential entry into the space, I’d be shocked if an eventual pair of Apple smart glasses didn’t have a camera.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about covering smart glasses at length over the past year, it’s that the category has a tendency to make people err toward the ideological—hardware-makers included. When I talked to Even Realities’ CEO, Will Wang, for example, he made it clear that the decision to exclude a camera from the company’s smart glasses was a philosophical one, not a product of constraints like engineering or price. It would appear Wang has a companion on that spectrum, and just like him, Altman’s gripes aren’t technical; they’re personal.