Kylie Jenner's 'Pervert Glasses'

24:28Richard Osman:And I really get it. And I think it brings some really interesting things into our culture. I think it brings some really interesting people into our culture who'd have had the door shut in their face before now. And so, you know, those are big conclusions to take from a reality dating show. But it's so enormous and it's so enormous for a reason, which is our culture has absolutely changed underneath us from 2005 and Celebrity Love Island with Jane Middlemiss to, you know, 2026 and this behemoth. Yes. And it's above all, it is what audiences want. Yeah. And it's good. and yes they're giving audiences what they want yeah people it's it's i've said this before but so many writers people who write comedy or fiction are obsessed with reality shows because eventually as you say you point the camera and eventually people start making you know reveal themselves but they also take extraordinary decisions in the moment and their impulses are so interesting to watch and so many like real prestige writers are obsessed with these type of show because it reveals character and that's a shortcut to seeing people be put in extremist situations and then having to make a choice i would go so far as to say if you love middle march then you'll love below deck because it's the same stuff yeah you know but yeah i in in conclusion it is the biggest show in the world and while there are issues with that i think it's worth sometimes going you know this is actually not bad there is something quite interesting about this and and there's an audience that's being super served and an audience that really really engages and understands what it is that they're watching in a way that if you don't watch you don't understand okay after the break we are going to be discussing kylie jenner's collaboration with silicon valley overlords meta for their smart glasses talk about always on yeah see you

26:19Richard Osman:This episode is brought to you by the Lloyds 5k house deposit. Lloyds are offering a 5k house deposit which was last seen in 1996. What are your entertainment memories of the 1990s? I feel guilty talking about the 1990s because you look back and it was such a golden era. We'd never had it so good and we didn't even realise because we were young and we just thought we were entitled to it. We absolutely took it for granted. Yeah, Britpop was absolutely in its pomp. Oasis playing to a quarter of a million people. You had Blur and Suede and Pop. Spice Girls and Girl Power, I'm so sorry. Spice Girls, amazing movies at the cinema, Trainspotting.

26:53Richard Osman:I mean, it felt a time of absolute optimism. But at the time, you just assume that was the way that the world was going. A very British type of optimism. But part of the optimism, of course, is that mortgages were more affordable. And that is what Lloyds is dealing with right now. Yeah, last seen in 1996, Lloyds are now offering 5k deposit mortgages to first-time buyers. Search 5k first-time buyer. 1996 average first-time buyer deposits based on ONS data. Subject to status, your home may be repossessed if you don't keep up repayments. Conditions apply. Hi, this is Gary Lineker from Goalhangers.

27:25The rest is football. This episode is brought to you by Wise. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee and what might be hidden away in the small print. Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas, or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate, an easy transfer, and no surprises along the way. Wise keeps things simple. Wise is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe. It works in more than 160 countries and with over 40 currencies. Most transfers arrive instantly.

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28:56Richard Osman:Welcome back, everybody. Now, before we talk about smart glasses, our bonus episode this week, not just for members, for everyone. I'm doing a series called The World Cup. I've done these many times before in different formats back when Twitter was at its height. The first one we're doing is the World Cup of US sitcoms. I've got John Robbins and Maisie Adam in the studio. I am dying to hear this. And we're going through more in common. Our lovely polling friends have polled the British public. We're going to find out what the favourite US sitcom of all time is. But we're going to chat about our favourites as well and little stories about the sitcoms.

29:26Richard Osman:So we're doing a whole series of those. But the first one, the World Cup of US sitcoms, will be out this Wednesday for everybody and then for members after that. But it's really good fun. And we thought it was going to be a short recording. And we did a whole bunch of them. And we were arguing so much about everything in a nice way. We really, really enjoyed it. So I hope you enjoy that. Talking of enjoyment, I remember a while back when Google bought out their Google glasses. And I was like, this is the worst thing that's ever going to happen. And then I was delighted because they absolutely failed.

29:59Richard Osman:No one bought them. They were an absolute nightmare. And you thought, good, that's gone away. It has not gone away quite the opposite. Yeah, smart glasses. There's a new collaboration, Meta's smart glasses. And I suppose we're going to talk what it means for both Silicon Valley and celebrities who have actually stayed quite separate, interestingly, in terms of promotional activity. But Meta have got a deal with Ray-Ban and they've had these glasses out for a while, different ones. and you'll probably have noticed Mark Zuckerberg has been or has taken to the stage various times wearing them. We'll get to that in a second.

30:30Richard Osman:I mean, if he's refusing to put them on, that would be bad. Kylie Jenner is the new face of their new glasses. There's one called Starfire. They cost about$300 or$400. Her voice is the AI assistant. She's been very hands-on, blah, blah, blah, all the things celebrities say when they do a brand collaboration. To me, it's quite interesting because Silicon Valley, first of all it's interesting to me on the marketing they don't sell things in this way think of what everyone has sort of all of those companies all of those tech overlords have sort of copied steve jobs which is you know you walk on stage and you tell people about a new piece of hardware which i suppose is fine if it's like all software i guess or if it's if it's a sort of some if it's some kind of desktop thing or a hardware thing or whatever or even metas various other products but the sort of corporate narcissism of mark zuckerberg who who would walk on stage wearing these glasses.

31:22It's like, yeah, like you're Earth's most malevolent dweeb. No one's going to buy anything off you. You can't disrupt everything, mate, OK? Here's how you actually sell things, OK? You get really hot people to take sexy photos, aspirational people, and then people want to buy the thing. So if you have a look at the pictures of Kylie Jenner leaning into the camera in her smart glasses, it's like, all right, you know. Whereas Zuckerberg, for a long time, I think thought he could just walk on a stage wearing these things. I think Jimmy Kimmel describes Zuckerberg as now dressing like a Chechen Molly dealer.

31:53And he walks on the stage.

31:55Richard Osman:Chechen Molly dealer. Yeah. But they now have a vice president of fashion meta. So they did this whole thing totally different. Do you know what? I literally never heard back when I applied for that. Could they just acknowledge the CV? Honestly, just say you've had it. Because otherwise maybe it went to junk. Yeah. Can I just check that you received it? Yeah. But I mean, I don't, as you know, I don't like to say wearables. But in this case, these are accessories that they're trying to sell. And this is how you sell accessories. And it's interesting that celebrities have actually mostly stayed away from tech.

32:27Kylie Jenner, obviously, these people are completely plugged into the platforms. They don't exist really without these platforms. But I remember there was a point where Kylie Jenner said something like, oh, is anyone else not really feeling the new Snapchat design? And it wiped a billion off the company. That was a while back, okay? Don't worry, it's recovered. But when you think about something like fashion or jewellery, think of how many celebrities have deals and campaigns and whatever. And actually, speaking about movie stars before the break, that is actually one way for those people to stay always on.

32:57They're present because they are viewable in advertising campaigns.

33:01Richard Osman:I mean, you look at Beckham at the World Cup and he's getting more minutes than any of the players. It's unbelievable. It's absolutely extraordinary. It's unbelievable. His ability to sell everything. There's nothing. Well, that's the thing about the Kardashian-Jenner is that there's nothing they won't sell. Celebrities have been very wary about doing things with Silicon Valley. If you look at the much more kind of typical Silicon Valley reaction, I think celebrities slightly feel that this thing might destroy them. Yes. Movie stars definitely do. And they're probably right. Scarlett Johansson obviously had a huge kind of blow up about her voice being used as an AI assistant.

33:33Witherspoon recently, who has a sort of lifestyle portal and recently said, oh, women, we need to understand AI, all of this. She got a massive backlash. It wasn't even paid for, by the way. So celebrities are very aware of it. But the Kardashian-Jenners will sell absolutely anything. I'm amazed they don't have defense contracts. Amazed. They will sell anything. Any backlash is water off the ducks back when they draw their power from it. They just don't care. So rather like Becca, there are certain people who just don't, once you've promoted a sort of emirate or whatever, you don't obviously mind.

34:02But what happened with Instagram is that that was only made into it, which is a meta product, obviously. that was only made into a thing because fashion and celebrities thought oh hang on a second I can control images of myself I can release things and that allowed people to be always on in a different way so celebrities and movie stars and what have you made Instagram a thing and they're now realizing I think they have to do these with these glasses well that's the interesting thing

34:27Richard Osman:about it because so Google Glass launched and it was a big tech product it was a tech play entirely it looked like a tech play as you say they were just sort of worn by the tech pros and it disappeared entirely what meta did very very early on is well on one hand thinking about what the smart glasses can do and by the way we should talk about what smart glasses do which means yeah okay good but they teamed up immediately they went to um esselor luxotica yeah which is one of those big brands that essentially owns everything that you've ever heard of and they are the owners of ray-ban so they actually they went to the makers of ray-ban and said no we're going to make a fashion item we will put all of the tech inside that fashion item but it's going to be fashion first and you know we're constantly told that tech stocks you know trade you know 10 times more than any other stock and tech have suddenly realized that actually fashion stocks are the ones that really trade above everything so they have finally realized to sell it in a fashion way as well yeah don't bother doing a deal with ray bad if mark zuckerberg's going to wander out i don't want to buy anything off him and so kylie jenner i think interestingly i think these were already a hit before she signed up with them you know they sold a million in a year they reckon they've sold three million you know people are actually using them and wearing them and it got to the point i think where she was able to say oh okay this is a fashion fashion i'm sorry they did i get that they were made by ray-ban and whatever but they didn't look fashion now the ones she's done look fashion oh they look fashion yeah i mean as listen i i have so much more to say about this but um you know since i got turned down for the vp yeah job at meta yeah just i feel yeah i say Snap are bringing out some glasses.

36:01But again, Stephen Meisel's going to do the photography.

36:03Richard Osman:You can't have glasses called Snap. That's a terrible idea. Yeah, Snap glasses. Stephen Meisel's going to do the campaign. Kai Gerber, they've got loads of celebrities doing those. So this is becoming a different thing. And yet, they are, are they not, Richard? One of the darkest iterations of surveillance capitalism. They might be the worst thing in the world, I think. They're literally pervert glasses. They're pervert glasses, for sure. Though it's weird they didn't go with that name. so you they are essentially glasses which are a camera which have speakers as well which have recording capability both audio and visual so you can walk around essentially either filming what is right in front of you or live streaming what is in front of you i mean particularly live streaming that's uh that's without consent you can do all of those things new ones have ai capability so whenever you're looking around it can it can be giving you information about what's around you They say, oh, you can find out what sort of tree is next to you.

37:01And many of the firms have plans to integrate facial recognition into these systems.

37:06Richard Osman:If anyone ever were to do that, there was two Harvard students in 2024 who they did a viral demonstration with Ray-Ban Meta Glasses. They combined it with facial recognition software, which some of the companies say they're not going to put in, but we know they would eventually, some of them. And also public databases. And they could identify strangers on the street in real time. They surface names, addresses and phone numbers within seconds. The experiment was dubbed iXray and it sparked widespread alarm, but that was a year and a half ago and that alarm seems to have dispersed a little bit. It'd be handy, though, when you can't remember someone's name.

37:39Richard Osman:That actually is handy. And it will get rid of the embarrassment I see almost on a daily basis. If I'm walking down the street and someone recognises me but isn't sure, they know my face or assume I'm someone from work. and so they'll give me like a really sort of sight embarrassed nod it will solve that for them because they'll go oh that's that guy from yeah yeah i'll be able to run through all the hits yeah whichever show i do and in the same way that people will unblock phones for you you know you can just yeah and someone will unblock the phone someone will disable the recording light for you for like a hundred dollars or something yes so they have a little recording this is supposed to show that matter of matter of thought of thought of all this so they've got a tiny tiny light which is on when someone's uh recording but you can have it you can also you can just cover it up it's like the easiest thing in the world and we do recognize that meta are above everything a data company yeah an information company so while they say oh no we will have pretty strong safeguards in place uh when these are being used let me tell you i'm aware that all of our previous products we said that and it hasn't really paid off but these ones you're going to be absolutely fine so you're going to be walking around a street where everyone is going to be wearing ray-bans they're all filming you at all times they can capture what you're saying there'll be an ai display telling them who you are all of that stuff is possible all that stuff is probable and now they're being advertised by the most beautiful people on the planet and built by a company with an almost endless uh reserve of money that's scary right yeah i do and i think it is that I would, you know, if you were advising people, as I say, the Kardashian-Jenners, they literally don't care hardly what they advertise, but a lot of other people would think, do I really want to be associated with these things that the law is so far behind?

39:29As always, the law is so far behind being able to keep up with this. How do you consent? You know, they are complete. We know that they are, people call them creep magnets. They're pervert glasses. You can see pickup Cup artists filming all the time. And then just immediately posting. And you haven't obtained people's consent. There are stories about people who have fled abusive relationships and then it's quite clear if they're being filmed at work. Because lots of people just do like, well, someone we might talk about, Michael Barrymore, bizarrely.

39:59Richard Osman:Yes, Barrymore meets Zuckerberg this week. Michael Barrymore, if you don't know who he was, our younger audience, Michael Barrymore was a massive light entertainment presence on British television for a long time. he hosted loads and loads of the big shows he was the biggest name and he was biggest you know he was ant plus deck yeah he came out as gay relatively late on in his career he um and then there was this huge scandal where somebody was found dead in his pool after a party and that person a man had been sexually assaulted it was not clear what happened it's never been fully clear what has happened michael barrymore was never charged with any offense but he effectively fell completely from grace in that moment yeah he's someone who actually was cancelled people complained about being cancelled yeah yeah however you hear a lot about oh Nigel Farage has got so many followers on TikTok he's got 1.5 million Michael Barrymore has 4.4 million he's been reposted by people like Sabrina Carpenter and what he does is he just basically sort of wears glasses like this and he goes out to the shops and buys munchies and things like that and and And chats.

41:05And chats. And he puts it on TikTok. And he has got a huge following from it. He probably earns at least a quarter of a million a year from it. And it's a very, very big thing. But again, people were saying, well, hang on a second. If you're recording people in whatever, the supermarket, none of these people have really consented. There are people, there have been stories. I'm not saying that this is true of the people who he has filmed. But there have been stories of people who've fled abusive relationships or whatever. and then if you put it on a sort of mass viewership platform where it gets masses of hits and you think oh okay that person works in you know the asda of wherever then you are effectively doxing

41:40Richard Osman:people yes so this week finally after usdor the um shop workers union came out and said you you you can't do this they're talking directly to barrymore because it's so high profile he was filming in shops and by the way no one who's in those videos has personally complained but they they raised it with usdor just to say look by the way this stuff is going out and i don't know who's in the background and no one has signed a release form if you sign any if you film anyone in a shop and break it a tv they have to sign a release form to say that's fine and by the way of course 99 % of people are very happy with that but if you are going around he's sort of an interesting test case Michael Barrowmogs as you say 4.4 million followers and his whole stick is he will just go around and talking to people and put those interactions out but there's something so different even I mean we know that the hardware is to bring it even back to the glasses there is something so different even between holding a phone up so people know sort of they're being filmed and filming with glasses where people don't really know they're being filmed or don't understand it in the same way.

42:36And by the way, I'm sure that he is telling people

42:38Richard Osman:that he's doing that, but it would be very easy to do without doing that. So many people don't tell people and you can see on TikTok, there are massive, massive people who don't do it. So the hardware is changing people's behavior in another, even darker way than the last bit. the last bit um the camera quality is now amazing the audio quality is now amazing it's you know it would have passed for broadcast quality you know it's just it's incredible what you can do there are platforms who are ready to receive this instantly every single time a video goes viral that is that's marketing for the glasses because you know you know how it's been filmed and the whole thing now becomes an enormous tech snowball where it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.

43:24And as I say, the law is miles away from catching up on ideas. Miles away. How can you, you know, there are consumer protection lawsuits, I think, pending in the US because people can see where it's going. But it's very slow. You can't... And also when you've got that much money, who cares? Yeah.

43:39Richard Osman:I mean, you know, that's the point. I mean, you know, it's like they're, you know, trying to sue them for stealing the copyright of every book ever written. Well, they get fined like these ridiculous amounts. They get that fine sort of$15 million which is like one second's profit. Yeah, but these things are I do genuinely think these things are insane. I don't know what one does about that. I don't know what I would do if I were in government about it. I don't know if it's a cat that's already out of the bag. There are loads and loads of reasons why these things are great, by the way. What a lovely way to capture your child's birthday party.

44:11Richard Osman:They have live translation in these things. There are incredible things about them. As someone visually impaired, they could genuinely be transformative. When you put AI in that and everything can become clearer and sharper and you can explain what something is to me, absolutely transformational. All those things said, there will be some terrible things that happen because of these. There will be some awful consequences because of these. And I would bet any money that no one pays for those consequences. No. And as always, and the other thing is, as we often say with the platforms, you work for them for free.

44:41Richard Osman:Yeah. You pay to work for them for free. So all of these, because all of these things are training Meta's AI. All of this stuff is being fed back and it's training Meta's AI in these kind of human interactions. The things that AI is less good at, you are working for the company and you are training them. Everything that you film with these glasses, all of that, people basically work for these companies now. They spend so many hours a day for these companies that effectively you spend six hours a day working for free for a tech company. and that is actually your real job in the economy you have this other thing that you think is to do with it and what could pays you some money and how you pay your rent but actually what you really do is you work for free down these people's content minds yeah and a lot of those people are the same utter dullards who tell you that government is trying to track you all the time and so you don't understand how the world works you go you're wearing their glasses man can i if in case people feel anxious about this and i think sometimes when you think about technology and you think about all of these things you know it is quite anxiety inducing the way i always try and think about these things you know i love nostalgia so you look back at the 1950s and there's lots of things on facebook again oh my god look at that street and the cars and we left our doors open yada yada yada there's a very very monetizable accounts on on facebook that do that all the time if you think of today as the olden days i always find that's a really nice perspective to have if you look back and go oh my god it was literally the first time that people were like wearing glasses like the first time like one of the unions just said oh you shouldn't really wear these glasses in our shop I mean, it was crazy how unsophisticated they were back then.

46:15Richard Osman:I heard a podcast and they were talking about Love Island. And it's just a thing that people would sit and watch. Like they would sit down in front of a screen and they would watch that. So I always think when you walk down the street, look at the fonts on the signs, look at the product in the shop and look at the wrappers of chocolate bars and imagine in 40 years time how insanely old fashioned that's going to look. And sometimes I think that's quite a nice way to get rid of techno anxiety. I'm not sure that... Has that not helped you? No, I think, you know, people were right to be sort of suspicious of the robber barons and things like that.

46:46Oh, of course they were.

46:47Richard Osman:But it turns out there's nothing they could have done about it. So that's where anxiety comes from. It comes from our absolute inability to do anything about this. Well, it did eventually break up some of the... You know, these companies are so much bigger than something like Standard Oil, which was dealt with. I think there are... No, I think they should definitely try and break up some of these. Oh, I'm not saying don't do that. I'm just saying that if you are walking down the street, if you're walking down the street listening to this and you are not able to be part of a class action lawsuit, then one thing you can do is at least go, oh, one day this will all be sepia photographs on whatever Facebook is at that point.

47:23Right. Probably be like an artificial dinosaur living in your house.

47:27Richard Osman:Any recommendations? I have got a recommendation. It's only just out and you'll be reading stories from it all week, I should think, and beyond. It's called Regime Change. It's the book about the Trump presidency by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. Looking forward to that. It's really amazing. I'm sort of in two minds somehow about how these books work when you are reporters. They're both very, very kind of good reporters. Like you don't necessarily produce, not all of this is produced for the outlet you work for all the time. And some of it is kept for the book. But lots of it needs to be written about in a way that I suppose it just works particularly well in long form.

48:04and as a reminder of, you know, we become so desensitized and we obviously have to desensitize ourselves, but to remind you what you're living through in terms of the Trump presidency, it's extraordinary. And as I say, you'll be reading highlights and lowlights from it over the next weeks, but it's a really good reminder of just how insane the times through which we're living are. and so I'd write that's Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan

48:35Richard Osman:Excellent I'll recommend a book as well I recommend John Grisham's new novel The Widow I love John Grisham this is billed as John Grisham's first whodunit and in a sort of I suppose a very specific way it is but you know there's always plenty of murders in a Grisham but it's you know it's that thing of within the first four pages you're like okay I absolutely understand what this is about so this widow has got a huge amount of money you don't know where it is no one else knows she's got it and you're her lawyer done and also by the way you've got gambling debts John you have me for 350 pages thanks for getting into it quickly but it's you know he's just you know there's a reason he sold so many books oh absolutely so absolutely love that John Grisham the widow other than that we will be back on Thursday with a Q &A and tomorrow for everybody first episode free the World Cup of US sitcoms yeah I hope you enjoy it it was really fun to do I know I will.

49:31I'm listening to it right after this.

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50:29Richard Osman:This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+.