In the U.S., a class action lawsuit against Meta over its smart glasses is already gathering steam (and looking to recruit European users) while in the EU one coder has developed an app to alert people when smart glasses are nearby.
“I didn’t want to wait for the EU or national regulators, because it takes a long time,” said Yves Jeanrenaud who developed the Nearby Glasses app, which has been downloaded more than 120,000 times since he launched it in February.
“I’m pretty sure there are some valid use cases for smart glasses, but what we see online is a misuse of them. That’s not something that we, society as a whole, should just stand by and watch happen,” he said. He had read reports of women being secretly filmed by men wearing the smart glasses.
Lawmaker Cifrová Ostrihoňová said that, from a gender-based violence perspective, it is “simply unacceptable for any woman to worry about being filmed in public secretly and then worry about those images being shared online.”
A Meta spokesperson told POLITICO that its AI glasses include important built-in privacy safeguards, and the company has “teams dedicated to evolving these measures so that we can continue to deliver safe, secure products that enhance people’s lives.”
“Unlike smartphones, our glasses have an LED light that activates when someone prompts the glasses to take a photo or video that will be saved to their gallery. The glasses feature tamper detection technology to prevent people from covering that light. Unless users choose to share media they’ve captured with Meta, that media also stays on the device,” they said.
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