Kylie Jenner Just Became The Face, And Voice, of Meta’s AI Glasses

Meta has dropped the Ray-Ban name, launched its first in-house eyewear line, and handed Kylie Jenner the keys to the whole conversation. The smartest detail isn’t the gem on the lens – it’s the voice in your ear.

Meta has retired the Ray-Ban and Oakley branding it has leaned on for years and launched its first eyewear line under its own name – a trio of AI glasses called the Adventurer, the Fury, and, most discussed of all, the Starfire Kylie Edition, co-designed with Kylie Jenner.

The frames are still manufactured with EssilorLuxottica, the eyewear giant behind Ray-Ban, Oakley and half the designer cases in your local opticians. But the names on the temple are pure Meta. After a generation of borrowing other people’s heritage to soften the optics of a face computer, Meta is now asking whether people will wear its name on their face directly. The answer it’s betting on is Kylie.

The case for the gem:

Let’s deal with the design first, because it’s where the collaboration earns its keep. The Starfire is a slim oval – the smaller, rounder shape the Kardashian-Jenners have favoured for years – offered in black and tortoiseshell. 

Then there are the Kylie-specific flourishes, which are more thoughtful than a celebrity logo-drop usually allows. A small gem sits on the top right corner of the lens, near the camera – a deliberate wink to life under paparazzi flashbulbs, designed to catch the light like a camera going off. 

The adjustable nose bridge is metal rather than plastic, a change Jenner reportedly requested herself because it wipes clean of foundation. And the charging case has a mirror inside. Of course it does.

These are small things. But they’re the kind of small things that come from actually consulting the person whose name is on the box, rather than printing a signature and calling it a partnership.

The part that actually matters:

The Starfire is the first and only Meta AI you can set to speak in Kylie’s voice. Not just the assistant’s answers – the onboarding, the battery readouts, the spoken interface, all of it. Ask for a dinner idea or what’s happening nearby and you hear it back in her voice, complete with custom action sounds made for this edition.

Pause on that. We have spent two years watching creators worry about AI cloning their likeness without permission. Meta has flipped the anxiety into a product feature: the voice as an officially licensed, premium-tier experience you opt into and pay extra for. 

It’s a glimpse of a future where a personal brand isn’t only a feed or a face – it’s an interface other people choose to live inside. For a generation building identity online, that’s a genuinely new frontier, and not an entirely comfortable one.

Why Meta wanted her:

The Starfire runs on the same core hardware as the rest of the line – a 12MP camera, 3K video, open-ear audio, live translation across 20-plus languages, and a charging case good for around 40 extra hours. The standard Adventurer and Fury start at $299; the Kylie edition sits at the top of the range at $399. The premium is the personality.

And personality is the strategy. Meta’s bestselling glasses have always sold on the Ray-Ban name doing the heavy lifting on desirability. Removing it is a real risk for a company with a complicated privacy reputation – so it needs a new reason for fashion-literate people to want these on their faces. 

Kylie Jenner, with her reach and her very specific aesthetic authority, is that reason. The whole play is aimed squarely at a younger, more style-conscious buyer, the exact person who decides whether a category becomes chic or stays niche.

It’s working, conceptually at least. Smart glasses only go mainstream the moment they stop being something clever and start being something you’d actually wear. With Google partnering with Warby Parker and Samsung circling the same space, the race is no longer about who has the best camera. It’s about who looks best wearing it.

The Modems take:

For years, the smartest thing about smart glasses was the technology, which was also the problem – clever rarely translates to covetable. The Starfire is the clearest signal yet that the industry has finally understood the assignment: wearables succeed as fashion first and gadgets second.

But the voice is the story we’ll be watching. A licensed celebrity AI voice is a small feature today and a very large idea tomorrow – about who owns a personality, what a personal brand becomes when it can speak on your behalf, and how much of yourself you’re willing to licence. 

Kylie getting there first, is itself extremely on brand. The interesting question is who’s next, and whether the rest of us will get a say.

From $399, available now on Meta’s UK store.