Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses are quickly earning a far less flattering nickname: “pervert glasses.”
A new investigation has exposed how highly personal videos captured by users — including people undressing or using the bathroom — are being sent to contractors in Kenya for AI training, often without the subjects’ knowledge. The revelations have sparked widespread outrage online, with many accusing the devices of turning everyday wearers into unwitting voyeurs and reigniting deep concerns about privacy in the age of always-on AI surveillance.
Victor Tangermann for Futurism:
Automated systems designed to blur faces often failed, the contractors claimed, effectively giving them a front row seat of somebody’s most intimate moments.
“I don’t think they know, because if they knew they wouldn’t be recording,” one contractor said.
Many have quickly embraced a term for the devices that’s presumably sending Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg into paroxysms of fury: “pervert glasses.”
“Glad people are settling on the term ‘pervert glasses,’” another agreed. “Bonus points if you also say it while posting a picture of Mark Zuckerberg or call them Mark Zuckerberg’s pervert glasses.”
“Not a fan of Mark Zuckerberg’s pervert glasses,” wrote yet another. “I would prefer technology to make it more difficult to skeez, creep or perv on the world. I would like tech to protect me from creeps, not smooth the runway for them.”
The threat of simple smart glasses being used for surveillance isn’t some dystopian vision of a far future. Researchers have already shown that Meta’s smart glasses can be used to instantly reveal the identities of strangers in public — tech that Meta has reportedly been working on itself.
All told, smart glasses are a product category rife with uncomfortable connotations, especially when worn in the presence of others who may not know they may be recorded.
MacDailyNews Take: Unless their goal was to trash their reputation as quickly as possible, we bet Ray-Ban is rethinking its poor decision to tie up with an outfit like Meta.
Meta is to privacy as Chernobyl is to nuclear power. – MacDailyNews, December 19, 2024
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Meta glasses surely seem like perv-wear, but I speculate they are (just) leading the way of the vast majority of tech companies. Who doesn’t think GOOG wouldn’t like for every human to have a “scope” on their lapel, or shoulder strap? For all I know, they and others are surely testing for a more discrete device (glasses are an alarm) that will grab everything the wearer sees?
The public will be assured…it’s what we will need to know and be known. The relevant question; will AAPL be able to justify NOT playing a part?.
Even in “1984” Winston could duck behind a corner of his room and have a moment of privacy, which is increasingly difficult to avoid with this new Big Brother, watching for violations of “newsspeak” and “thought crimes”.
There needs to be a high court decision that says privacy is absolute and cannot be infringed, no matter what a person may agree to.
I was going to infer 1984 stuff, but many groan (naively) with incredulity.
We are headed there. More/more people in “power” look at China’s “order” that’s coupled with complete scoping of the public and conclude, we should do that–it’s not so bad. They’re capitalists (state-run) after all and so ordered (controlled).
See all the good the Flock cameras provide…and to object is conspiratorialist.