Mark Zuckerberg praised “superintelligence,” then his smart glasses demo fell apart on stage. At Meta Connect 2025 in Menlo Park, California, the Meta CEO struggled to complete key tasks with the Ray-Ban Meta Display and a new wristband. According to The Guardian, the show mixed big claims with awkward stalls.
AI assist falters during live cooking call
The event opened with video shot from Zuckerberg’s glasses, showing his walk to the stage and upbeat texts. He spoke about design, “technology needs to get out of the way,” and taking “superintelligence” seriously. He called AI “the most important technology of our lifetimes.”
Then came a live video call with chef Jack Mancuso. Zuckerberg suggested a “maybe Korean-inspired” steak sauce and asked AI to guide the cooking. The assistant insisted, twice, that Mancuso had already mixed base ingredients. He had not. After long pauses, Mancuso blamed the wifi and handed it back to Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg stayed calm and joked about the irony of years of work undone by wifi. The Guardian noted that live AI demos often fail. It cited Google’s Gemini silence during a poster scan, and a translation feature on Google glasses that failed after about 15 seconds.
Neural wristband demo stumbles too
Zuckerberg skipped slides and tried a live demo of the wristband he called a “neural interface.” It reads muscle signals to let users type with small hand gestures. He said it can help when you want to type without others seeing.
Repeated calls go unanswered
He tried to answer colleague Andrew Bosworth’s incoming video calls using the wristband. The onstage display showed “Mark’s POV” as missed call alerts piled up. “I don’t know what happened,” he said after the first try. He tried again, saying he would pick it up with his neural band. It still did not work. A sign in the room read: “Live demo – good luck.”
The Guardian described the whole show as polished at first, then messy when features were tested. It compared the scene to other famous demo misfires, including Tesla’s Cybertruck window break. The piece suggested the push to add generative AI to devices that already worked can feel forced. It asked who wants this gear, beyond those building and selling it.
