The 5 Smart Glasses And AI Wearables Trends That Will Define 2027

After many years of hype and several false starts, smart glasses and other AI-enabled wearables are gaining traction as consumer devices and business technology.

In everyday life, tech companies are teaming up with eyewear and fashion brands to sell them as gadgets you might actually want to be seen wearing. In industry, they are proving their value by giving workers hands-free access to information and expertise on the factory floor, and by taking notes so nobody else has to.

However, their rising profile has also prompted awkward questions about filming in public and about whether the safeguards around all the data we’re handing over are anywhere close to sufficient.

Here are the five trends I believe will define smart glasses and AI wearables in 2027, and what they mean for business and society.

Smart Glasses With Displays

Most of the consumer smart glasses now breaking into the mainstream, such as the Ray-Ban and Oakley models developed with Meta, can see and hear the world around you but can’t show you anything. That is changing. Models with a display built into the lens, such as the Meta Ray-Ban Display, which launched in late 2025, will reach a much wider audience in 2027. Humans process visual information faster than other kinds of feedback, and although the display is tiny, the idea is that AI will work out precisely what information we need in front of us at any given moment.

This turns smart glasses into an alternative to our phones for quick, moment-to-moment tasks like reading messages or looking things up. Finally, a way to ignore the person in front of you without the inconvenience of glancing down at your phone. Businesses are likely to put them to work quickly for on-the-job information and real-time translation.

That’s the plan, at least. Whether this further blurring of the physical and digital worlds truly goes mainstream depends on how well manufacturers overcome the technical and user interface challenges, and on how society reacts.