technology
Meta Adds Camera Shutoff on Tampered Ray-Ban Glasses While Testing Always-On Sensing Prototypes
Meta is adding a safeguard to its second-generation Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses that disables the camera if the recording LED is tampered with or destroyed. The change follows a lawsuit over privacy and reports of prototype testing for continuous sensing.
Jul 11, 6:00 AM·2m read1 source
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Meta is updating its second-generation Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses so the camera shuts off if the device detects that the recording LED has been tampered with or destroyed, Fortune reported. The glasses already disable the camera when the LED is covered. Meta published a blog post this week announcing the LED-tamper safeguard.
The LED recording light has been a standard feature on the company’s smart glasses since their first release in 2021. Meta is also removing Facebook Marketplace listings for services that disable the LED and may ban accounts or pursue legal action against people providing such services.
“More and more people use our AI glasses because they’re genuinely helpful in everyday moments like listening to music, getting live translation while traveling, or making a call hands-free.
The people who use them and those around them need to trust them,” Meta spokesperson Dina El-Kassaby said. Earlier this year Meta was named in a lawsuit alleging that intimate moments captured by users’ smart glasses were later viewed by workers in Kenya reviewing material to train the company’s AI models.
The complaint stated that the material included “people changing clothes, using the bathroom, engaging in sexual activity, handling financial information, and conducting other private activities inside their homes that no reasonable consumer would ever expect a stranger to watch,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Photos and videos captured by a user remain private unless the user chooses to share them. When media is shared with Meta AI, contractors may sometimes review it to improve the product, and the material is filtered to protect privacy and remove identifying information.
