{"id":633273,"date":"2026-09-23T07:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T07:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/633273\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T07:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T07:52:09","slug":"meta-leans-into-ai-smart-glasses-amid-privacy-pushback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/633273\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta leans into AI, smart glasses amid privacy pushback"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/lo\/mysterio\/api\/05946bab5a5b6ab6b28254597720fece2f29dd0f582ce02c089215287c6dcfe8\/lightyear_networkapi\/resizefit_w960%3Bquality_80%3Bformat_webp\/https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.zenfs.com%2Fen%2Fafp.co.uk%2Fd6321bbbe002f4b25f7d1b4ae4209baf.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP\/\/\/ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==\" alt=\"\" height=\"512\" width=\"768\" class=\"yf-1f8hkhu loader\"\/><\/a> Meta launched its Muse app this month, designed to act as a digital personal assistant (Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV)           <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">Meta has spent billions to stay competitive with artificial intelligence, but the tech giant faces growing pushback as CEO Mark Zuckerberg prepares to announce new products built for the AI era on Wednesday.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">The company will kick off its annual Connect conference from its Menlo Park headquarters at 4:00 pm PT (2300 GMT) Wednesday, and Zuckerberg will deliver a keynote address to the developer-focused event.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">Earlier this month the social media giant launched Muse, its first agentic app for consumers which is designed to perform tasks on behalf of humans, like a digital personal assistant.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">After a user connects various personal accounts &#8212; whether financial, health-related or shopping &#8212; they can ask Meta to perform tasks like signing up for services, booking appointments and making calls.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">Amazon blocked Meta this week from using AI bots to shop for users automatically, while other businesses including Instacart, Shopify and Expedia have announced partnerships to integrate their services into Muse.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">The Muse agent is built on Meta&#8217;s own AI models and is designed to compete with OpenAI&#8217;s ChatGPT and Anthropic&#8217;s Claude.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">The company had its first pair of interactive smart glasses in 2021, about a year before OpenAI sparked a global AI frenzy with its release of ChatGPT, and since then the devices have become more and more advanced.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">&#8211; &#8216;Pervert glasses&#8217; &#8211;  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">Last year, Meta unveiled a pair of augmented reality &#8220;display&#8221; glasses which project images on the lenses.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">And earlier this year, the company released self-branded AI glasses, apart from its partnership with eyewear manufacturer EssilorLuxottica, which produces multiple Ray-Ban-branded Meta glasses.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">However, their novelty quickly became clouded by privacy concerns, with critics dubbing the eyewear as &#8220;pervert glasses.&#8221;  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">At last year&#8217;s Connect, Meta&#8217;s chief product officer Chris Cox brushed aside such concerns and told news outlets, including AFP, that &#8220;social norms&#8221; would form around the use of smart glasses.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">More recently, Meta has said a recording indicator light would always be visible to people nearby, and that tampering with the indicator light would disable the camera.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">The company is reportedly working on a new pair of audio-only glasses, and has also been rumored to be developing a new generation of mixed reality glasses.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">Meta has also been battling children&#8217;s safety and privacy issues around the world.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">In August, the company settled a lawsuit with dozens of attorneys generals in the US who accused Meta of violating state and federal laws regarding consumer protections and children&#8217;s online privacy.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meta launched its Muse app this month, designed to act as a digital personal assistant (Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV) Meta&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,60,2597,233004,69525,132098,80],"class_list":["post-633273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-meta-glasses","tag-personal-assistant","tag-privacy-concerns","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}