Meta’s AI glasses have a growing reputation as creepy technology. The company hopes to change that attitude 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 appears to be a concession to consumer sentiment that the glasses are not just fun, fashionable accessories happily promoted by Kylie Jenner, but have serious implications for consumer privacy: They can be misused as surveillance equipment.
Still, even as Meta unveils the new protections this week, the company is also pushing products and features that ask users to surrender more of their privacy to the company.
Whether it’s training its AI on your photos, 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 always seems to hinge on collecting more of your personal data.
In its blog post about the new camera security 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 effort.” However, Meta also admits that the move was necessary because some people had been using tape to cover the LED light, which had already forced Meta to adapt its technology to disable recording when the LED is blocked.
Determined, the same AI goggle crawlers would then use “sophisticated efforts to alter or destroy the capture LED,” Meta’s announcement explains.
In other words, Meta confirms that some people using AI glasses have hidden agendas – namely a desire to record situations or people (often women) without their consent.
Despite this, the company is reportedly testing prototype AI glasses that “would continuously collect sound while taking pictures every few seconds,” sources recently told the Financial Times.
Meta’s blog post about the glasses feature tries to assuage people’s fears about device privacy by answering questions like “who can see the photos and videos I take on my glasses?” Meta responds by promising, “You and only you—unless you choose to share them.” Still, Meta’s privacy policy has explained that any image you share with Meta AI can be used to train its AI.
All the while, the company is facing multiple investigations and lawsuits over privacy violations with Meta AI glasses. The lawsuit comes after Meta notably canceled a contract with an outsourced tech company after some of its Kenyan workers alleged they had to watch graphic content such as sex, nudity and people using the toilet while training Meta’s AI using people’s Meta AI glasses’ videos.
This is hardly Meta’s first brush with privacy or security breaches.
Arguably, Meta’s privacy reputation has been tarnished for years after numerous leaks and lost lawsuits over its alleged lack of child safety measures and desire for growth at any cost. There are books by whistleblowers documenting its alleged abuses, not to mention past wide-ranging privacy disasters, like the Cambridge Analytica data scandal and others.
Following the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, Meta now insists on its Privacy Progress Update page, “Since 2019, we have invested significantly in people, products and technology to continue to develop our rigorous privacy program.”
Yet the company is plowing ahead with what many people would consider offensive ideas. Case in point: On the same day it announced Meta Glasses’ new protections, it shared that Meta AI can now use anyone’s public Instagram photos to create AI photos, unless you opt out.
It also built features to use Meta AI on photos in your camera roll that you’ve never shared, and then implemented poor privacy controls in its Meta AI app, leading users to essentially dox themselves by revealing their embarrassing searches.
This is the same company that Apple wouldn’t work with due to privacy concerns, that records its employees’ keystrokes to train its AI, and that plans to sell targeted ads based on data in your AI chats.
So while an LED shield on AI glasses may be a necessary feature, consumers clearly still have plenty of reason to remain leery of how social media will use their photos and data, especially in its broader AI plans.
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