Meta defends AI smart glasses amid criticism

Meta's AI smart glasses have been branded 'creepy' and an invasion of privacy amid cases of people using them to secretly film women and girls and then posting the footage to social media without their consent.

The glasses however also offer many benefits to people who are blind or have limited vision because the devices' AI technology can help with everyday tasks like reading text, identifying objects and accessing information about the world around them.

Maxine Williams is vice president for accessibility and engagement at Meta, and spoke to RTÉ News while on a visit to the company's Dublin headquarters.

Asked about the glasses being used for the non-consensual filming of people, Ms Williams said that any recording device can be used to secretly film.

"What's different with these glasses is that if you think of all of the things on which someone can be recorded, inappropriately, these are the only ones where there is actually built into it, hardwired, a warning, a notification that you are being filmed."

"There's an LED light that blinks if you're being videoed or if a photograph is being taken, so that there is warning, that is a protection for privacy. And if you try to tamper with that or cover it, the camera stops," Ms Williams said.

But there are lots of reports of people successfully tampering with the light by drilling it or covering it up.

"We learn what bad actors will do," Ms Williams explained.

"We learned that they were covering the light and so we built something in to stop that."

"We learned that people were trying to drill the light to disable it, so we built something to stop that," she added.

Earlier this year, it was reported that workers at a company in Kenya contracted by Meta had to view graphic, intimate images captured by Meta AI glasses.

So how private are the images taken by the glasses?

"If you take a photo on your glasses, it remains on your device. It goes to nobody, nowhere else," Ms Williams said.

"If you were to ask the AI a question, like 'what plant is this?', then it has to take a photo to know what you're asking about and analyse that. That photo could then be used to keep training the model."

She added that users now have an option to opt out of their images being used for the training of AI models.

Around the world, the glasses have been banned by courts and offices, as well as by chains of bars and restaurants.

"It's very, it's concerning and it's sad," Ms Williams said.

"I went to a store recently and they said I couldn't enter with my glasses."

"They were very happy for me to film anything with a phone or any other device. That just doesn't make sense."

In August, Meta announced plans to donate 15,000 free AI glasses to Vision Ireland, the national sight loss charity.

"Imagine being blind and not being able to tell when you want to make a meal in your own home, which are beans and which are peas, because they feel the same," Ms Williams said.

"It's the ability of the camera to take a picture of the scene, analyse that, and then tell you what you're experiencing. You walk in a room, you can say, 'tell me where I am, what's in front of me'," she added.