In June 2026, Meta launched its Starfire Kylie Edition smart glasses. The clip Kylie herself made, using the glasses she shared on Instagram, gave us a glimpse into her life as a billionaire. The idea of the Kylie Meta Glasses collaboration was to entice potential customers with the views of a glamorous life and the use of AI glasses as an everyday style accessory. This proved to be a very important marketing move by Meta; they priced the glasses $100 above the standard line, and it had Kylie’s voice, too.
Within a week, it generated millions of social media impressions, with influencers also posting about their purchase, and many in the comments asserting their desire to buy them ASAP, which, as one of Meta’s execs said, was also a testament to Kylie’s influence. This campaign generated 275 million social media impressions and rapid sell-outs at launch events. Prior to this, the majority of Meta glasses buyers were male, with the numbers going up to 65-74%. Meta’s own fashion partnerships teams have said that the goal was to reach the Gen-Z girlies, who prior ambassadors like Ray-Ban or Oakley were not able to tap into. As per a study published in Forbes, women consumers drive somewhere between 70 and 80 per cent of purchasing decisions globally.
The Perverted Glasses Issue: Marketing Gimmick to Launder Distrust
But this marketing push operates against a more treacherous backdrop. A BBC study had just found that men were using identical Ray Ban Meta glasses to secretly film women on the street in the name of dating advice content, which also earned it the name ‘pervert glasses’. There are numerous reports of women being harassed by men wearing Meta glasses, recorded without their consent and then turned into social media content.
Using Jenner’s voice, face and aspirational femininity was just a marketing gimmick to launder a surveillance product’s reputation, specifically to the demographic most likely to distrust it. Researchers have constantly said that feminising the technology is a way to make it less threatening and more palatable to the population. This collab was just a way to grab the attention of the perennially online Gen-Z crowd, who have now been told that content creation is practically a life requirement and that you must make an aesthetic out of your everyday, mundane life. There are two folds of claims: these glasses are an urgent accessory for looking stylish, and the ability to record everything is a feminine necessity in an age when men are harassing women with their Meta glasses. It is all just a cavern of empty promises, but with the manicured and polished version of the allure of Jenner’s lavish life.
The Familiar Pattern of Feminisation of AI: Why Feminising Sells
This is not a one-off marketing choice; throughout the rise of tech and AI in day-to-day life, we have seen a long-standing pattern of how AI is gendered by default. In 2019, UNESCO published a report that asserted that many voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and most GPS and customer-service voices have historically been made feminine, from their traditionally feminine names to their voices, colour choices, and talking demeanour; they are female. A 2024 study said that gendered technology entrenches stereotypes and shapes expectations about who ought to serve, assist and who holds authority. Robotics Anthropologist Kathleen Richardson has noted that designers now deliberately move away from terminator-style machines towards more cute, feminised, and disarming designs. This makes it more acceptable and also allows for more surveillance and automation tech to be easily deployed in everyday spaces.
Historically, women are less likely to jump on the bandwagon of tech trends that are in vogue, like crypto and AI, and feminise them; i.e., make them palatable to women by using a false sense of urgency to look fashionable, making them lucrative for women, and increasing their sales. This feminisation of AI happens when a contested technology is wrapped in all things ‘feminine’, such as beauty, femininity, and familiarity, so it feels safer. Brands always use such gimmicks of more financial independence and personal improvement to market their products to women.
The tech industry’s turn toward feminised branding should be read as a deliberate strategy, one instance in a broader, older pattern. Historically, companies have also tried to sell to women by literally painting products pink or shrinking them to make them appear cute. It is insidious that AI lets companies feminise the product itself rather than just its packaging.
Surveillance Tool or A Fashion Statement?
This Kylie-Meta partnership represents the most preposterous version of this playbook yet: that women aren’t just a market segment being sold pink hardware, they are also being sold a feminised relationship with the AI itself, one designed to disarm exactly the privacy and consent concerns that women, as the primary targets of covert filming and harassment, have the most reason to raise.
By using a highly followed fashion icon, the tech now seems harmless and urgently needed, as shown by the number of people who got on the bandwagon and bought these overpriced glasses right after the launch. Putting such an important surveillance tool in the hands of a fashion icon then makes the glasses more of a fashion accessory, and the question shifts from their use to their aesthetic value. Now that more and more men are using these glasses, women might also start using them more as a safety weapon against harassment and unwanted pestering.
Even in India, having a cricket star like Virat Kohli be an ambassador for Meta follows the same gendered lines. His campaign is centred on athletic intelligence, skill, and performance, while campaigns featuring women like Kylie Jenner and BLACKPINK’s Jennie are framed around beauty and fashion aspirations.
Feminising technologies is about making it sellable, which is what this collaboration ultimately reveals. From giving conventional female voices to AI chatbots and virtual assistants to having influential women campaign for the products, it is still a pattern of distrusted products in familiar, feminine packaging. The stakes are higher here, as documented in the perils of surveillance devices being used without women’s consent. And now, selling the same product to women by borrowing a familiar, influential face and voice is yet another gimmick in the name of empowerment.
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