DuckDuckGo’s answer to AI glasses: “Normal F***ing Sunglasses.”

DuckDuckGo has released a $35 pair of sunglasses whose entire selling point is that they do nothing.

Made with San Diego eyewear brand Knockaround, the Paso Robles frames carry no camera, no microphone, no AI, no battery and no electronics of any kind, marketed under the deliberately blunt name “Normal F***ing Sunglasses.”

The launch is a direct swipe at Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, which start at $299 and have been nicknamed “pervert glasses” after reports of people using them to film others without consent.

In its launch video, DuckDuckGo leans into the joke: “We’re obsessed with innovation, so when big tech started putting cameras in smart glasses, we asked ourselves a radical question: what if we just didn’t do that?”

The promo video goes further, calling the sunglasses “the first smart glasses guaranteed to never record nude videos of you and send them to random people,” adding, “I never thought I’d have to guarantee that, but here we are.” It even spoofs a marquee feature, offering a “360-degree panoramic lens” that works so long as “you turn around in a circle and see things.”

Knockaround, which designed the frames, describes them more plainly: “No camera, no microphone, no AI, no battery, no electronics of any kind. Just a beautifully crafted pair of matte black sunglasses with a glossy DuckDuckGo logo, designed to block the sun and never send data to the cloud.”

The collaboration follows Apple’s own privacy-first ad and the enshittification spoof from Norway in using humour to make a serious point about surveillance and data.

The sunglasses sold out within a week.