‘A Douchebag With a Camera on Your Face’: Should Smart Glasses Record Imagery?

As smart glasses become more and more popular — increasingly looking like a competitor to the ubiquitous smartphone — the contentious feature is the camera. It’s been at the center of a string of controversies, from creeps clandestinely filming people to tech workers reviewing users’ intimate footage.

“We are seeing a lot of people rushing to our channel… saying OK… we prefer not to be douchebags with a camera on [our] faces,” Will Wang, the chief executive of Even Realities, tells the Financial Times. His company has just launched the Even G2 smart glasses, which carry a display in the lens but don’t have a camera or a speaker.

Wang, who is described as a “Silicon Valley veteran”, heads up the China-based firm and has given a series of inflammatory interviews taking aim at Meta. “They’re losing money selling the product,” Wang says of Meta’s collaboration with Ray-Ban and Oakley. “So the only way that it makes sense for them is [if] they actually can benefit their model [with] data.”

While Meta insists that users can choose whether data stays on the device or not, the recent revelations that tech workers in Kenya have been contracted to label images and videos so that Meta’s AI systems can better interpret visual information have shocked some people. The workers told Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten that they have seen naked bodies, people going to the toilet, and even sexual activity.

Wang tells Android Police that the rush to include cameras in smart glasses as standard is “really irresponsible.”

“Unfortunately, right now big tech seems to be pushing towards it. What’s really worrying is Meta is pushing [cameras] hard, their sales are growing, and they are successfully getting Google and Apple to panic,” Wang says.

Google and Apple are both working on smart glasses, and Samsung is expected to unveil its attempt in the coming months. While the smart glasses market is still relatively small, the buzz is around how fast it is growing. The Financial Times reports that shipments rose 322% in 2025 to 8.7 million units. Meta accounts for 5% of that market.

‘Douchebags’

The “douchebags” that Wang refers to, also known as “glassholes”, are online creators who record people in public without their knowledge. While this is not illegal, it does raise new ethical issues. One woman named Oonagh from the U.K. said she was filmed by a man without her knowledge and consent. The interaction of the man asking for her phone number was published to TikTok where it received at least one million views. Oonagh was sent the video and said she became panicked as she read the comments — many of which were abusive.

The Even G2 glasses are display-only glasses that could pass as regular glasses. A spatial display floats information in front of the user’s eye. They cost $600 and Wang says the G2 collects the minimum data required for apps to function. When it uses its translation software, it immediately discards the audio data.

“We can identify shots from a wannabe Chinese competitor when we see them,” Meta tells the Financial Times in response to Wang’s comments.

Image credits: Even Realities