Meta’s AI glasses have a growing reputation as a creepy technology. The company hopes to change that opinion by announcing an update that will disable the camera if the LED light that indicates the glasses are recording has been tampered with.
The move is seemingly a concession to consumer sentiment that the glasses aren’t just fun, fashionable accessories, happily promoted by Kylie Jenner, but have serious implications for consumer privacy: they can be abused as surveillance devices.
Yet, even as Meta touts the new safeguard this week, the company is also pushing products and features that ask users to surrender more of their privacy to the company.
Whether that’s training its AI on your images, enabling AI features using your personal content unless you opt out, or exploring ways to continuously record or use biometric facial recognition, Meta’s vision of the future seems to always depend on collecting more of your personal data.
In its blog post about the new camera safety feature, the company pats itself on the back, noting that “no other kind of camera has done this and we’re proud to lead the industry forward.” However, Meta also admits that the move was necessary because some people had been using tape to cover up the LED light, which had already forced Meta to adapt its tech to disable recording when the LED is blocked.
