{"id":320313,"date":"2026-03-03T22:35:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T22:35:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/320313\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T22:35:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T22:35:15","slug":"dear-meta-smart-glasses-wearers-youre-being-watched-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/320313\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Meta Smart Glasses Wearers: You’re Being Watched, Too"},"content":{"rendered":"

No one likes being recorded by Meta\u2019s Ray-Bans smart glasses, which have gotten increasingly popular in the last year or so. Now the wearers know how everyone else feels. According to a joint investigation published by Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet<\/a> and G\u00f6teborgs-Posten<\/a>, sensitive and personal footage captured by the devices\u2014including people going to the bathroom, getting dressed, and having sex\u2014is being reviewed by contractors who see all of it uncensored.<\/p>\n

The investigation found that much of the footage captured by Meta\u2019s smart glasses, of which more than seven million pairs<\/a> have reportedly been sold, is reviewed by contracted workers at a Kenya-based company called Sama. These workers are data annotators who are tasked with reviewing footage captured from the camera on the glasses and labeling it to help AI systems get better at identifying what they see. The process is tedious and labor-intensive, requiring workers to meticulously label everything on screen that can be identified.<\/p>\n

The firehose of footage meant to serve as valuable training data that is being delivered to these contractors apparently doesn\u2019t undergo much of a culling process before it lands at their stations, because, according to the investigation<\/a>, a lot of private, personal, and at times intimate images are getting shared.<\/p>\n

Contractors reported being able to see things like a person\u2019s credit card when they go to complete a transaction at a store or text messages they send and receive when they look down at their phone. Those are things that one could reasonably assume might accidentally get caught on camera when a person forgets to turn off the record feature, but some contractors reported seeing a lot more of people than they ever expected.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn some videos you can see someone going to the toilet, or getting undressed,\u201d one contractor for Sama told Svenska Dagbladet and G\u00f6teborgs-Posten. \u201cI don\u2019t think they know, because if they knew, they wouldn\u2019t be recording.\u201d Another contractor claimed that they reviewed footage where the wearer of the glasses set them down on a bedside table, only to have their wife walk into the room and undress, presumably unaware that she was being watched. Other footage reportedly showed the wearer watching porn or even recording themselves having sex (Odds are they knew they were recording in that instance, given smart glasses have really caught on in the world of adult content<\/a> lately.)<\/p>\n

The wearers of these glasses probably don\u2019t want that footage seen by third parties. And the contractors sure seem like they\u2019d rather not watch it\u2014though they risk losing their job if they decide not to label something. \u201cYou understand that it is someone\u2019s private life you are looking at, but at the same time you are just expected to carry out the work,\u201d an employee told the papers. \u201cYou are not supposed to question it. If you start asking questions, you are gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Futurism pointed out<\/a> that Meta\u2019s terms of service for its AI products<\/a>, which cover its smart glasses products, include a line that states the company can \u201creview your interactions with AIs, including the content of your conversations with or messages to AIs, and this review can be automated or manual (human).\u201d It also notes content from its users can be reviewed \u201cthrough automated or manual (i.e. human) review and through third-party vendors in some instances,\u201d to, among other things, \u201cprovide, maintain, and improve Meta services and features,\u201d and to \u201cmonitor your use of AIs for compliance with these Terms and applicable laws and to report violations of applicable laws or regulations as required by law.\u201d<\/p>\n

The only solution the company offers for users who would rather not have their trip to the dressing room reviewed by a set of eyes they never intended to send the footage to? \u201cDo not share information that you don\u2019t want the AIs to use and retain, such as information about sensitive topics.\u201d Basically, don\u2019t record it if you don\u2019t want a stranger to see it.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s far from an ideal solution, even for the wearer of the glasses, but it\u2019s not a solution at all for other people who are caught in the camera\u2019s view. The owner of the glasses can turn them off to avoid capturing something they don\u2019t want on camera. Everyone else just has to hope they\u2019re not being filmed by a stranger, only for that footage to get reviewed by other strangers. It\u2019s bad enough that we live in a surveillance state. It\u2019s made even worse by the fact that corporations are convincing people to pay for products to participate in advancing it.<\/p>\n

Gizmodo reached out to Meta for comment but did not receive a response at the time of publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No one likes being recorded by Meta\u2019s Ray-Bans smart glasses, which have gotten increasingly popular in the last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,1430,159270,2842,159271,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-320313","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-meta","14":"tag-meta-ray-bans","15":"tag-privacy","16":"tag-smart-glassees","17":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}