The Meta is testing what is arguably its most controversial wearable idea, it seems. According to a report by the Financial Times, the social media giant currently has “feel good” AI glasses at work in its test labs. The premise of these AI glasses is that they want to record all the sights and sounds in the world around them. The idea behind these highly sensitive AI glasses is not to turn them into an always-hearing, always-listening machine that sounds like a privacy nightmare.
Meta apparently wants all that data recorded by its next-generation smart glasses to serve as a knowledge base and eventually turn into a personal agent or assistant. Mark Zuckerberg has already stated that this human agent should be with you around the clock and be able to help you with anything you need. Instead of just acting like a typical AI agent that listens to your questions and gives an answer based on its memory or the knowledge it has been trained on.
This smell is dangerous
Currently, as soon as a person starts taking photos or videos using the internal cameras of Meta’s AI smart glasses, the white ring light activates, ensuring that anyone else in the camera’s field of view can see if they are being recorded.
However, those measures have not proved to be durable. Soon after the introduction of the Meta smart glasses, there were many reports showing evidence that you can interfere with the LED indicator light, ensuring that videos can be recorded without alerting anyone else to the camera’s view. Last night, Meta announced that it will completely disable the camera if the LED indicator light is obstructed or covered. This feature will be rolled out via a software update to the existing range of Meta smart glasses.
And that begs the question: if Meta does indeed develop a highly sensitive wearable, something that records audio and video constantly, will the LED light be on forever and visible to everyone from the camera frame?
“Administrators are currently planning not to use LED when sensitive features are used, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. That would make it difficult for observers to know when they are being recorded, which could heighten privacy concerns about the technology. Those plans are still evolving, however, multiple people said,” the report said.
The plans are ready
Most importantly, it seems that the super sensing feature is already ready to ship, and can be activated on the existing line of Meta smart glasses through a software update. The idea is controversial, but it seems like Meta has a solution for that too.
One of the proposals for implementing this program means that all data and voice recorded by AI smart glasses will not be available for the user to download and will not be shared with Meta. Instead, all the metadata collected from audio clips and images will be extracted and fed to Meta AI so that it can answer users’ questions correctly. The company is also looking into the possibility of using this recorded data to train its AI models, something that will raise privacy alarms.