Meta’s latest Connect keynote didn’t quite go as planned. During the highly anticipated event, two major live demos of the company’s smart glasses features failed in front of thousands of viewers — leaving Mark Zuckerberg visibly frustrated on stage.
While Zuckerberg initially blamed the venue’s Wi-Fi, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth has now offered a more detailed technical explanation of what went wrong.
The First Failure: Live AI Demo
The first mishap happened with Live AI, a new feature available on Meta’s AI-powered glasses in the US and Canada. Live AI allows users to carry on continuous conversations with Meta AI without repeating “Hey Meta,” while also giving the assistant a live stream of what the wearer sees.
Influencer chef Jack Mancuso was meant to showcase this feature from a kitchen setup. The demo started promisingly — Meta AI correctly identified items like soy sauce on the counter. But when Mancuso asked what he should do first to make a Korean-inspired steak sauce, the AI simply repeated: “You’ve already combined the base ingredients” again and again.
According to Bosworth, the real issue was that Mancuso’s “Hey Meta, start Live AI” command, broadcast over the venue speakers, triggered every Ray-Ban Meta in the building. To prevent interference, Meta had rerouted Live AI traffic through a development server — but the unexpected flood of requests from multiple devices overwhelmed it.
This left the AI feeding back seemingly cached responses, possibly from a rehearsal session. Some critics even suggested this might indicate the demo wasn’t fully live. Bosworth didn’t confirm that, but the incident highlighted the lack of voice authentication — something Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant already use to avoid cross-device confusion.
The Second Failure: WhatsApp Video Call
The next glitch came during Zuckerberg’s attempt to showcase a WhatsApp video call using the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses paired with the Meta Neural Band. In theory, he should have been able to accept a call from Bosworth and view his video feed in the glasses’ heads-up display.
Instead, despite Meta AI announcing the call and the ringtone playing, Zuckerberg was unable to answer the call — trying four times with no success.
Bosworth later explained that the issue was caused by a race condition. The glasses’ display went to sleep at the exact moment the first call came in, preventing it from being processed properly and blocking subsequent calls as well. He admitted it was the worst possible time for the bug to appear, but confirmed it has since been fixed.
Audience Reactions
Unsurprisingly, the failed demos sparked plenty of online mockery, with some enjoying the rare sight of Zuckerberg struggling on stage. Others, however, saw Meta’s choice to run raw, unfiltered demos as a refreshing change from the highly scripted presentations that tech events usually deliver.
Many within the industry sympathized, noting how notoriously “cursed” live demos can be — and that these hiccups don’t necessarily reflect the stability of final shipping products.
Bosworth on Live Demos
When asked whether Meta would reconsider doing live demos after the failures, Bosworth defended the approach.
He argued that audiences understand the unique challenges of demoing in a packed event hall with thousands of devices broadcasting at once — a situation far removed from real-world use cases.
“I think people trust us and know the product’s real,” Bosworth said, pointing to positive hands-on impressions from journalists and early testers.
What’s Next
Despite the Connect hiccups, Meta is pushing forward. The Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses will soon be available for public demos at select US retailers starting September 30. That means anyone curious about the tech won’t have to take Bosworth’s word for it — they’ll be able to try it out firsthand.
