Opponents of so-called smart glasses have begun a new campaign to fight the sale of the camera equipped devices in Ireland and the UK, targeting retailers, venues, politicians and opticians.
The campaign, Stop Smart Glasses, is targeting the mass-market sale and promotion of the devices, providing interested parties with a database of where the glasses are being sold, and templates for letters to send to local representatives to demand action.
Meta’s smartglasses are AI enabled and contain cameras that can be used to take pictures and record video.
The glasses have been used as an accessibility aid for people who are blind or have low vision, with Meta Ireland donating 15,000 pairs to Vision Ireland for use by the people the organisation works.
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But, they have also been used to film covertly. That includes the point-of-view pick up line videos, with men engaging women, recording the interactions covertly on smart glasses and posting the videos online. Other users have intentionally disabled or obscured the capture notification light that alerts people when the glasses are being used to record.
Meta said it put out an update to the glasses in July to prevent tampering with the capture LED. However, critics do not believe it is sufficient.
The campaign was created by tech founder Liz Hunter, who has teamed up with UK-based teacher and campaigner Guy Holder. Holder had already begun a petition against smart glasses in the UK, urging the government to ban their sale.
“I was appalled by them the moment they came out. My gut instinct was instantly cautious, like surely this is really bad? And then the reports that have started coming out lately just confirm that,” she said. “As a parent I’m terrified of what it could mean for my child. I don’t want him to grow up in such a broken world. Even if we’re too late to stop this, I want him to know that at least his mum tried, and stood up for our rights to privacy.”
The website, StopSmartGlasses.com, points people to the petition but also provides them with the tools to take action locally.
It took a week to build, Hunter said, with the help of AI tools that included a custom ChatGPT tool, Generator 3000.
The campaign is seeking greater debate on the implications of the technology.
“The wearer chooses to put a camera on their face. Everyone else is forced to live with that choice. The wearer gets the technology. The company gets the profit. Everyone else loses control over when they’re recorded and what happens to the footage,” said Hunter. “That’s a transfer of power dressed up as progress, and it’s an absolute disgrace. The price of innovation shouldn’t be your right to privacy.”
Further concerns have been sparked by patents filed by Meta that would see facial recognition technology integrated into the glasses.
Meta previously discussed plans internally to integrate facial recognition into its smart glasses. Further investigations found dormant facial-recognition code embedded in the Meta AI companion app for phones, which Meta subsequently removed.
