ROSEVILLE, Minnesota — Slipping on Meta’s AI-powered glasses at Best Buy’s new in-store hub, shoppers can navigate to the nearest coffee shop, view text messages or translate menus in real time with a voice command or subtle hand gesture.

But as the retailer rolls out dozens of Meta Labs hubs, privacy concerns around glasses and other AI products are growing. Critics have raised alarms about the potential to secretly record people and Meta’s work on facial-recognition technology.

Best Buy has teamed up with Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to open about 50 shop-in-shops across the country. The spaces feature Meta’s smart glasses and virtual reality headsets, with employees trained to demonstrate the products and answer shoppers’ questions.

The partnership reflects Best Buy’s broader strategy of turning stores into places where customers can test emerging technology before deciding whether to buy it, Chief Revenue Officer Patrick McGinnis said.

“AI glasses are by and large a new experience for most customers,” McGinnis said in a phone interview. “Understanding all that they can do, understanding the AI features and things like live translation are things that really need to be brought to life in a store.”

Yet whether consumers embrace the devices may depend as much on trust as the technology itself.

“There is this general concern that needs to be balanced, and in some cases it is the market — the people — that are going to decide what the outcome eventually will be in terms of social acceptance,” said Soumya Sen, associate professor of information and decision sciences at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.

All of Meta’s smart glasses include built-in cameras with an LED light that illuminates while recording to alert people nearby.

But some early users found workarounds, including placing electrician’s tape over the LED or prying open the glass panel and drilling out the light. In response, Meta said in early July the company will disable the glasses’ recording functionality if the LED has been tampered with.

Meta has also developed facial-recognition technology for its smart glasses, though the feature has not been released to consumers, according to reporting by Wired.