Halliday's New Meeting Glasses Ditch Cameras but Still Record Audio

Halliday has unveiled its second-generation smart glasses, a device aimed squarely at professional settings where cameras might raise eyebrows but audio recording feels more acceptable. The Halliday G2 will retail for $599 when it ships in September 2026, with optional AI subscription services ranging from free (capped at 120 minutes of recording) to $99 monthly.

Camera-Free Design Targets the Workplace#

The glasses themselves are relatively inconspicuous, designed to vanish into boardrooms and client meetings without triggering privacy concerns tied to built-in cameras. The key difference from competitors: no lens-based recording. Instead, strategically placed microphones capture audio and feed it into Halliday's AI-powered Meeting Flow service, which transcribes, organizes, and summarizes conversations in real time.

The device includes a small display that sits at the top of the lens, allowing wearers to glance upward to see meeting summaries, translations in 45 languages, and subtitles for accessibility. Features like Thread Tracker, Decision Confirmation, and Commitment Check attempt to isolate the decisions and action items buried in typical corporate rambling.

The Camera Problem Halliday Is Sidestepping#

Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses have become industry-standard for remote audio and video capture—so much so that they've earned an unflattering nickname: "pervert glasses." The devices have been repeatedly misused to photograph and record people (predominantly women) without consent, creating persistent negative press.

Halliday's camera-free approach sits alongside competitor Even Realities' similarly named G2 model, which launched last year with an identical privacy-first positioning. Both companies are betting that eliminating cameras will make their glasses feel safer in professional and social contexts where video recording feels invasive.

The Audio Recording Transparency Gap#

Yet Halliday's solution introduces its own gray area. Unlike some wearables that emit indicator lights while recording, the G2 has no visible signal to alert nearby people that their voices are being captured. When asked about this, a Halliday representative told WIRED that "the user should disclose to the room that the recording is in progress, as it is required by any other recording device"—essentially placing the ethical burden on the wearer rather than building transparency into the hardware.