A hot potato: If there's one product that really doesn't need any more negative stories, it's Meta's smart glasses, but here we are. Some users discovered that the wearables were recording their voices without the wake phrase, an issue the company says has now been resolved.
A redditor recently wrote that they'd noticed something concerning with Meta's Ray-Ban glasses: they were capturing conversations when they were talking to other people despite the "Hey Meta" wake phrase not being used.
The conversations appeared in the Meta AI app as saved audio recordings and text transcripts. It's also noted that the "Respond without Hey Meta" setting was turned off, and that the white notification light was sometimes activated when the person was speaking normally.
This could have been a problem with a single pair of Meta's glasses, but the same behavior was present on three different pairs, including 2nd- and 3rd-generation models. Most tellingly, it appeared after a firmware update was rolled out to the devices.
Meta support was contacted about the strange behavior, but its response was to recommend disabling microphone and camera permissions, turn off Wear Detection, delete voice history, and disable automatic updates.
The user complained that these steps would not only disable the product's core functionality but also fail to explain or address the problem.
The post adds that the user is consulting with a lawyer about the possibility of initiating a class-action lawsuit if other customers discovered the same unwanted voice recording.
Several responses to the post confirm that other Meta Ray-Ban users experienced the same issue: the glasses randomly recording conversations without the wake word.
Meta has since responded to the Reddit post, though it never gave any information on exactly what happened and why. "This issue has been resolved. People can manage, review and delete voice logs of their interactions with Meta AI via settings at any time," the company told Android Authority.
Wearing smart glasses in public is becoming about as socially acceptable as walking around sporting a swastika badge. Norway is considering temporarily banning them in parks, beaches, and schools, and they're being banned in courtrooms across the US and elsewhere.
This isn't the first privacy nightmare involving Meta's smart glasses. In March, contractors in Nairobi said they'd been paid to study hours of raw footage captured through Meta's "live AI" feature, analyzing everything from simple interactions to some very intimate moments. This data labeling allows Meta to train its computer vision systems, though the people who were recorded using bathrooms, getting dressed, and having sex might not care too much about the reasons.