Instagram and Facebook owner’s smart eyewear has received sustained criticism for helping enable creepy behaviour and non-consensual filming
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The glasses include a camera in the temples, intended to make it easier to take a photo without reaching for a phone or camera. But that feature has led to intense criticism of the glasses, which have been accused of enabling creepy behaviour.
The growing concern about privacy intrusions – and viral videos that shows them being used by pick-up artists and supposed pranksters to capture people unknowingly – has led to the eyewear being nicknamed “pervert glasses” and prompted growing concern that they are enabling and encouraging intrusive and non-consensual behaviour.
The backlash has grown so strong that it appears in danger of derailing Meta’s rollout for the glasses, which it has invested in heavily as a vision of a future of augmented reality and wearable technology. And the company is launching a range of changes intended to try and ensure that it doesn’t.
The latest of those is a new update that tries to counter the ways that people are able to try and film others without triggering the “capture LED” that is supposed to show on the glasses when they are recording. Meta has stressed the importance of that LED, which shows a light on the outside of the glasses when the camera is activated.
The glasses are supposed to turn off the camera if that light is covered up. But some users found that it was possible to cover up the light after recording is started and continue to use the camera, which the new update is intended to fix.
“We have an update coming to increase the reliability of the capture LED on our AI glasses,” said Alex Himel, Meta’s vice president for augmented reality, on its Threads platform. “The camera won’t start recording if the LED is blocked, but some people try to bypass this by starting a recording and then covering it up. A fix for this is starting to roll out – the camera will now stop working if the light is covered during a recording.”
Further updates will come in future to try and make sure that the LED continues to work to ensure people when they are being filmed. In another post, Mr Himel claimed that “only a tiny minority of people try to get around” the existing protections, “and the fact they have to go to these lengths shows our efforts are working”.
The new change comes about a month after Meta pushed out a software update intended to ensure the glasses turn off the camera when someone physically tampers with the capture light. It also comes days after the publication of a patent that suggested Meta was exploring new ways to physically stop the camera from operating if users try and tamper with the glasses.
Alongside the new update, Meta is also launching a new marketing campaign apparently aimed at addressing concern about the glasses. Many of them focus on the same recording light, stressing that it “lets everyone around you know” that you are filming with the glasses, and another points to the fact the LED “signals when the glasses are capturing photos and videos”.
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