Meta added a privacy-safety feature to its AI glasses but is reportedly testing a ‘super-sensing’ prototype | Fortune

TL;DR

• 1

  Meta is adding a privacy safeguard that shuts off the camera if the recording LED is tampered with or destroyed, responding to concerns that users were disabling the light to covertly record people with Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses.

• 2

  The Financial Times reported Meta is testing a 'super-sensing' prototype that collects continuous audio and takes photos every few seconds, and executives have discussed not activating the LED while those features are in use, raising new privacy alarms.

• 3

  Meta faces a lawsuit alleging that intimate moments captured by users' smart glasses were reviewed by contractors in Kenya to train AI models, including people changing clothes, using the bathroom, or engaging in sexual activity.

• 4

  Fox Rothschild partner Mark McCreary called the anti-tampering move positive but said it appears at odds with the super-sensing prototype, adding that a cynic might say Meta is distracting from the bigger privacy issue.

• 5

  The core privacy tension is that bystanders in footage captured by smart glasses have not consented, while the wearer may have agreed to share data with Meta AI, and Meta's business model relies on advertising revenue from knowing everything about users.