When Meta launched its AI-powered smart glasses in 2023 in collaboration with sunglasses brand Ray-Ban, a flurry of controversy ensued.
There were several reports of the devices being used to harass women and, especially, girls. They were filmed without consent and the images were later shared on the internet.
Meta's recent hiring of Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian's sister, as the company's main model, apparently did not solve the image problem. The devices have been dubbed "perverted" or "sinister" glasses.
In the United Kingdom, JD Wetherspoon pubs, some major theaters, Comic-Con, certain schools and the British Navy base Faslane, which houses the country's nuclear submarines, have decided to ban it.
On Thursday (24/9), Meta presented a new version of smart glasses without a camera, called Ray-Ban Meta Audio. They will have the same audio functions as the original glasses (including the ability to make phone calls or play music, with the sound directed directly to your ear), but with fewer consequences for people's privacy.
For some industry professionals, it seems like an interesting change and, perhaps, a reaction to privacy criticism.
Meta denies that the new glasses were launched hastily in response to public outrage. The tech giant says the product has been in development for two years.
The audio-only version is cheaper than its camera-equipped cousins, and the company has stated that its frame is lighter and has longer battery life.
I told Meta Glasses' head of product, Ankit Brahmbhatt, that I thought this model could outsell the original camera glasses. Upon hearing this, he paused significantly.
"We have, I think, something for everyone," he declared, choosing his words very carefully.
But does the launch of a cameraless option represent a shift in the way technology companies look at the future of smart glasses? And will the original version of Meta be maintained?
Or should we see glasses without a camera as a niche by-product, which serves a small market, similar to what some cell phone manufacturers do, who started to launch "brick" shaped phones, without internet, for people tired of social networks?
Music, maps and car wash
Without a doubt, smart glasses have become a source of controversy.
I was loaned a pair of Meta Ray-Bans (with camera) to test.
Initially, I was nervous about wearing them in public, due to the possibility of physical harassment. I've heard of people ripping glasses off people's heads and smashing them in the street.
In fact, I used them on public transport and walking in several British cities, such as London, Glasgow and Portsmouth. No one showed any reaction.
The experience made me wonder whether the public's knowledge of them really is as great as Meta and anti-glasses activists believe.
That said, some people have quietly told me that they wouldn't have the confidence to approach someone wearing these glasses, even if they identified them, for fear that the interaction would be filmed and uploaded to the internet.
The glasses are designed to act as an extension of your cell phone. They use Bluetooth to synchronize with the device, through Meta's AI application.
The devices are voice-activated, and open speakers in the stems channel sound into your ears. The result is similar to non-noise canceling headphones, so you can still hear the world around you.
My opinion, which may be subject to cancellation, is that I found a use for several of the glasses' functions. And the interesting thing is that none of them included the camera.
Listening to music and podcasts on the go, without needing headphones covering my ears, seemed safer to me. And I felt more confident avoiding the cell phone thieves who cycle around central London without physically holding my phone.
My woeful sense of direction forces me to use map apps a lot. And it turned out to be practical to hear the instructions in my ears.
But the downside was having to accept that the Meta AI app knew exactly where I was at all times. Meta is known for its thirst for personal data.
When I posted about using Meta Ray-Ban on social media, I faced difficult times. But the reactions were different when I showed them to the people who are part of my daily life.
My hairdresser, for example, loved the idea of using them to record her clients' hair transformations. I spoke to a bodybuilder at the gym, who imagined using it to record what he was doing, whether in case of accidents or even to teach other people new techniques.
My runner friend said he would like to wear the glasses on a run. And many content creators are fans of the device.
My son borrowed them to wash my car and proudly showed me his footage of how he delicately removed a piece of bird poop that was resisting leaving the car, without damaging the paint. I was satisfied, happily taking his word for it.
More broadly speaking, smart glasses have been well received by the visually impaired community.
One user described them to the BBC as "revolutionary" as they can provide audio descriptions of current locations and read aloud visible text, such as a restaurant's menu options.
In August, Meta donated 15 thousand pairs to a charity organization for the visually impaired in Ireland.
Regulatory requests
Still, the furore over privacy has grown.
The glasses have a white LED that starts blinking when the camera is on, which has led to the emergence of a real industry, looking for technical solutions to turn off that light. Some of them require the glasses to be disassembled.
Meta states that less than 0.1% of frames sold worldwide have been physically manipulated. Exact sales figures are unknown, but EssilorLuxottica, owner of the Ray-Ban brand, reported selling seven million units last year.
Technology entrepreneur Liz Hunter created a petition calling for urgent new regulations for smart glasses. She's a mother and she's furious.
"They never, ever should have left the lab with Meta," Hunter declared.
"It's a true travesty of public trust, of women's equality, and it has rolled back our right to privacy right before our eyes."
Hunter believes smart glasses should remain available to people with visual impairments, but not to the general population.
“We don’t need them, nor do we want them,” she says.
A Polish developer has released an app called ZuckOff. It uses Bluetooth to identify nearby smart glasses and has been installed thousands of times, according to Wired magazine.
Ben Wood of technology research firm CCS Insight remembers first reading the phrase "perverted glasses" in the typically moralistic Financial Times newspaper. For him, this is a sign that the device generated "a strong reaction from the public."
But the furor hasn't deterred other companies from watching the market.
Samsung would be working to establish a collaboration with the renowned glasses brand Warby Parker. Google would also be developing a model of smart glasses.
Snap, the company responsible for Snapchat, recently launched the Specs model, sold in American retail for US$2,195 (about R$11,400). Users can view data inside the glass and snap their fingers to take a photo.
Snap founder Evan Spiegel believes that smart glasses will one day replace cell phones. And he's not the only one who thinks so.
Setback or distancing?
When Meta launched smart glasses in 2021, they were designed, in part, based on what the wearer could see.
The company promised it would allow users to "easily record the world as they see it" and "capture life's moments in real time, from a unique first-person point of view."
That's why Meta's latest launch (the cameraless glasses) is so notable.
Concerned about smart glasses, researcher Janusz Swierczynski, from the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom, says that the launch of a version without a camera is a "positive sign" that Meta appears to have listened to concerns regarding privacy.
"They're thinking about it and they're responding," Swierczynski says. But he doesn't think this is a "perfect" answer, as glasses with cameras remain on the market.
Others are not so sure that the measure represents real change.
"It's certainly not the end of cameras in glasses," according to CCS Insight's Wood.
He believes that smart glasses, in large part, are for capturing information. The glasses collect as much data as they can from their environment and use AI to tell the user about it.
And camera glasses (trained on what you can see) are an "extremely good" source of this information.
“It’s a valuable stream of data to an AI platform, which can interpret that data and provide the best possible information related to it,” explains Wood.
“Therefore, having your visual parts with the cameras is a fundamental pillar for getting the best experience.”
Wood imagines that Meta has been working on cameraless glasses for several years and that the current backlash over privacy has provided "fantastic momentum" for its launch.
In fact, to date, Meta has shown no sign of slowing down the development of camera glasses.
The company will launch its third generation of the glasses in the UK in October. They can display data visually inside the lens.
In fact, as a journalist who broadcasts live and has spoken openly about mental fog, I can understand the attraction of a pair of glasses that can discreetly display a script for the wearer.
Technology analyst Kate Winick of research firm Forrester says this isn't a step back from camera glasses, but rather a "move away, giving users time to get used to the technology... so that the users themselves start to say, 'Oh, it would be so much more useful if it had a camera.'"
And she comments, paradoxically, that the existence of glasses without a camera can help "reduce the pressure" on people who wear glasses with a camera in public.
“It is now known that some glasses on the market have cameras and others do not,” she explains. Therefore, "you can't automatically yell at everyone who wears Meta glasses, because you might not know whether they have a camera or not."
Towards a social norm
Other companies try to respond to privacy concerns in different ways without eliminating the camera.
The Taiwanese company HTC recently launched the Vive Eagle glasses, which cost less than 25% of the price charged by Snap.
HTC Vive vice president Thomas Dexmier says that if anyone near an Eagle glasses wearer says "stop filming" or "stop recording" and one of the four microphones picks up the expression, the camera will be disabled.
He highlights that all recordings captured by the glasses are encrypted and not even the company itself can observe them. But this also means that HTC cannot identify harmful content.
"We recognize that there are difficulties that can become real problems, especially for women", according to him.
For Wood, "this is inevitable."
“We will need to find a social norm, a framework for the use of these products.”
