Yet another major confidentiality the problem has hit a company owned by Meta.
This time, it’s a Meta product that definitely couldn’t afford any privacy concerns: the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses.
According to numerous user reports, Meta’s smart glasses made audio recordings of their conversations without the user’s permission.
Meta has since confirmed the issue and said it has been resolved.
“This issue has been resolved,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement to Android Authority. “People can manage, view, and delete voice logs of their interactions with Meta AI through Settings at any time.”
Crushable speed of light
In a post to Reddit Earlier this week, a user explained that Meta was recording and making transcriptions of his conversations without enabling the smart glasses to do so via the “Hey Meta” prompt. The setting to enable recording without this prompt was also disabled when Meta’s smart glasses recorded conversations. The user said they noticed the white light on the smart glasses which indicates activation is on during their conversations.
Worse still, this wasn’t an isolated issue on a single device. The user said they observed the issue occurring on three different pairs of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which included second and third generation models.
Users in the comments also shared their own similar experiences.
Earlier this year, an investigation discovered that videos recorded by Meta smart glasses were being sent to offshore Meta workers in Kenya for labeling data used to train AI models. These videos included disturbing clips and intimate moments, including bathroom footage of users who were likely unaware that their recordings were being viewed by third parties.
Although Meta claims to have since resolved the issue, the company has not shared the cause of the problem.
Smart glasses are already being criticized for their ability to secretly record people. Devices recording without the product owner’s knowledge East are certainly not ideal.
Gn tech
