Meta is facing backlash for adding “anti-features” to its “featureless” smart glasses and charging users extra for them.

Meta is putting the Conversation Focus feature for its smart glasses under a subscription.

The company revealed that users will be able to use the feature for a limited time unless they have a Meta One Premium subscription, which costs $20.

It noted that AI glasses don’t require a subscription, but “all AI glasses owners get free monthly usage for certain features.”

The feature will be limited to free use for 3 hours a month, or 15 hours per month if you’re a Meta One Premium subscriber.

“Remaining unused balance and usage details are not currently available for AI glasses features. Unused hours do not roll over to the next billing cycle,” shared Meta on its help website.

Conversation Focus is an AI-powered feature that is available on Meta’s Ray-Ban and Oakley glasses. The feature boosts the voices of people in a noisy background, so that the user can hear them better.

Why is Meta’s Conversation Focus feature paid?

“Beyond wild. They aren’t limiting the hardware itself, they are now trying to limit your time permitted with certain hardware features. Totally insane,”

wrote one Reddit user, hinting that the company is asking people to pay for the device-based feature, and not the service.

“Adding new anti-features to a featureless device is a bold move,” added another Redditor.

Some users tried to understand the reasoning behind the new limitations, with one netizen adding:

“They oversold the hardware with slim margins, underestimated their compute costs, and the investment is not paying off their expectations of matching Google for training data, along with grim revenue projections and no long-term path for profitability. This was entirely predictable.”

Meta is adding ridiculous ‘rate limits’ and a soft paywall to its smart glasses
by u/MarvelsGrantMan136 in technology

Meta responds to the change

Meta explained that, for the Conversation Focus feature, users usually don’t exceed the monthly limit, according to The Verge.

The subscription is optional, and mainly for “power users” who need higher limits and additional support, a Meta spokesperson shared with The Verge.

The Meta Premium One subscription plan includes “expanded monthly AI usage,” allowing you to generate and edit more images and videos and receive more accurate and detailed AI responses to questions and tasks.

Meta smart glasses have already been under scrutiny for raising possible security and privacy concerns.

For example, many were quick to notice that the device could be used to record others without their knowledge.

Researchers then found a facial recognition system in Meta’s smart glasses, which was inactive. Following the discovery, the company quietly released an updated version of the Meta AI app, which removed facial recognition components.