The question usually reaches you secondhand: a colleague mentions that "someone in Legal wasn't thrilled" about the glasses in yesterday's meeting, and suddenly you're wondering whether you're allowed to wear them at all. Here is the uncomfortable but honest starting point.
Short answer: Yes — an employer can generally ban AI glasses at work, and the fact that the Even G2 has no camera does not, by itself, take that option off the table. Employers routinely set rules about what equipment staff use and how they conduct themselves on the job; a head-worn display sits comfortably within the kind of thing a policy can address. This is a description of ordinary workplace reality — not a Swiss labour-law ruling. For your specific contract or a formal dispute, that's a question for your HR department or a qualified adviser. The productive move is to understand why a no might land, and to answer the reason rather than the ban.
Why "but it has no camera" doesn't settle it
The camera-free design is honestly the strongest card you hold. It removes the single biggest objection — the fear of covert recording — and in an argument about protecting colleagues or clients, that matters a great deal. But a ban and a recording worry are not the same thing. An employer isn't only asking "could this record me?" They also get to ask "does this fit how we work, how we look to clients, and how we handle information?" Those questions survive the absence of a lens.
The reasons a reasonable employer says no
Understanding the objection is more useful than disputing the right to make it. In our experience the concerns cluster into four:
- Data handling. Some features send audio to the cloud (live translation, some assistant prompts). In a workplace handling client or patient information, "where does that audio go?" is a fair question — and one you should be able to answer.
- Optics and perception. Even with no camera, the person across the table may not know that. A device that looks like it could be recording unsettles people, and a firm may simply prefer to avoid the conversation. This is about perception, not capability — but in client-facing roles, perception is part of the job.
- Attention and distraction. A display in your line of sight can pull focus. An employer worried you're reading notifications mid-conversation isn't being paranoid.
- Consistency and fairness. If one person wears a discreet display in an exam-like or competitive setting, others may see an unfair edge. Blanket rules are often easier to run than case-by-case exceptions.
Seen fairly: a ban is rarely personal, and rarely a verdict on the device's quality. It's usually a risk-and-optics decision made once, for everyone — which is exactly why a calm, specific answer can often move it.
What you can actually do
If the glasses matter to your work, treat a restriction as the opening of a conversation, not the end of one. A constructive sequence:
- Lead with the camera-free fact — clearly. State plainly that the G2 has no camera and cannot photograph or film. Many policies are written with camera glasses in mind; yours may never have considered a display-only device.
- Separate the cloud features from the rest. If the worry is data, explain which features are phone-side and offline (notifications, downloaded teleprompter, notes) versus cloud (live translation, AI prompts) — and offer to leave the cloud ones off at work.
- Name the concrete benefit. "I use it to read speaker notes without looking down" is easier to grant than a vague "I like wearing them."
- Offer transparency. Volunteer to tell people in the room. Disclosure defuses most of the perception problem before it starts.
- Propose a limited trial or a carve-out. Rather than all-or-nothing, suggest specific settings (your own desk, internal meetings) and revisit later.
- Accept a no gracefully where it's reasonable. In some rooms — a confidential negotiation, a regulated environment — a ban is the right call, and pushing it damages trust more than the glasses help.
If your goal is to actually make that request well — the wording, the timing, the trial proposal — that deserves its own treatment; we cover the "how to ask" separately from this "can they say no" piece.
Where a ban is simply the right call
We'd be doing you a disservice if we implied every restriction is negotiable. There are settings where you should expect a no and respect it: confidential client meetings where any cloud feature is a live risk; exams or assessments where a hidden display is a fairness problem regardless of intent; regulated environments (some financial, legal and healthcare contexts) with strict device policies. In those rooms the camera-free point doesn't rescue you, because the concern was never only the camera. Our page on how AI glasses handle data goes deeper on the cloud-versus-local split that drives most of these decisions.
So: buy, skip, or test first?
Buy if your intended use is largely yours to control — your own desk, your own presentations, or an employer who is relaxed about it already. There the G2 earns its place with eyes-up notes and notifications.
Think twice if the entire value depends on wearing them in exactly the settings most likely to restrict them — a trading floor, a courtroom, a regulated clinic — before you've had the policy conversation. Buying a tool you may not be allowed to use where you need it is an expensive way to find out.
Test first — the conversation as much as the device. Check whether your role sits with who the G2 is really for, borrow the argument above, and raise it with your manager before you buy. If it clears that bar, come try the real thing in the Zürich showroom with your own workflow in mind.
Disclosure: AI-Eyewear is the authorised Swiss reseller of Even Realities. We'd rather you settle the workplace question before buying than own a pair you can't wear where it counts. None of this is legal advice.