Smart glasses have quietly morphed into tiny surveillance cameras that people willingly wear on their faces. Every other week, a new pair promises to record video, listen to conversations, and feed it to an AI model somewhere in the cloud. They are causing such havoc that they have earned a new name: “pervert glasses.”
Not only are these glasses a privacy nightmare for people being recorded but also for people using them. A recent investigation by Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet showed that Meta Ray-Ban glasses were uploading intimate and private recordings for training its AI.
DuckDuckGo, the search engine that built its entire reputation on staying out of your business, decided to poke fun at that trend the best way it knows how, by launching sunglasses that do nothing at all.
Teaming up with sunglasses brand Knockaround, DuckDuckGo has released the Paso Robles frame in a matte black finish with a glossy DuckDuckGo logo on the side. The company even had to clarify online that yes, these are real and you can buy a pair right now.
What do you get for $35?
You get a proper pair of sunglasses, nothing more and nothing less. Polarized lenses, full UV400 protection, and FDA-compliant impact-resistant lenses, all packed inside a custom hard case for storage. There is no battery, no charging port, and no chip hiding inside the frame. They are just a normal pair of glasses, and that’s the point.
Knockaround even lists the charge life as infinite, the camera count as zero, and the notification count as zero, which might be the most honest spec sheet on the market right now.
Why would anyone want glasses that do less?
Because doing less is the entire joke, and also the entire feature. You can wear these to the beach, a coffee shop, or a family dinner, and nobody has to wonder whether you are quietly filming them or feeding their conversation to an AI.
DuckDuckGo is calling it the world’s most innovative anti-surveillance eyewear. No camera, no microphone, no AI, just a pair of sunglasses doing the one job sunglasses were always meant to do.
If you want a pair, they are currently listed on Knockaround’s website for $35. It is a small, funny product, but it makes a real point about where wearable tech is headed, and clearly, not everyone is comfortable with that direction.
