How awkward was it when Meta’s new smart glasses failed during a live demo?

Look, technological issues happen to the best of us. We’ve all been on a conference call or in a video meeting when the technology decides not to work as you expected, and it’s not fun. But it’s even more not fun when you’re trying to demonstrate the effectiveness of said technology to a large audience.

This is the danger of live tech demos, which was on full display on Wednesday at Meta Connect. The technology company wanted to show off its new Ray-Ban Display smart glasses, but the live demonstrations didn’t quite go as planned. It was certainly awkward when CEO Mark Zuckerberg tried and failed more than four times to receive an incoming video call on his glasses. He eventually laughed it off and moved on, and the crowd was certainly entertained, but it wasn’t the result he was hoping for.

Unfortunately, the awkwardness didn’t stop there, as the glasses had issues again during another live demo, this time for cooking. The wearer was trying to use them to help him make a steak sauce for his sandwich, but had to awkwardly repeat the question multiple times while the AI struggled. Zuckerberg commented that the Wi-Fi appeared to be causing the struggles, illustrating the necessity of good connectivity for good tech.