Are Ray-Ban meta glasses a privacy risk? Here’s what you need to know

Meta doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to protecting user privacy. So it’s no surprise that people are increasingly wary of the company’s smart glasses.

I’ve written about my own mixed feelings regarding glasses and Meta’s privacy since the release of the first Ray-Ban Stories glasses in 2021. I’ve also spent a lot of time talking with Meta about its privacy policies as the product has evolved over the years and AI has become a core feature.

As you might expect, Meta is capable of retrieving a lot of data from his glasses. But exactly what it collects may vary depending on your settings and the features you use. Here’s what I learned about what Meta can access and how to limit his collection when possible (spoiler: it’s not always possible.)

The idea that Meta will automatically see any photo or video captured with its glasses is something I’ve come across often in my reporting on people’s discomfort with the product. You wouldn’t expect a photo shared on Instagram or Facebook to remain private. So it’s understandable that people would assume the same thing about anything captured with the company’s smart glasses. But that’s not the case, according to Meta.

“Unless users choose to share media they’ve captured with Meta or others, that media remains on the user’s device,” a Meta spokesperson confirmed to me.

Things get a little more complicated, however, if you’ve opted for cloud media storage. If the setting is enabled, your captures are automatically stored on Meta’s servers for 30 days. Meta notes that cloud media is an optional setting, although it is necessary for some features to work. This includes the ability to share photos and videos with friends via voice commands and features like auto capture.

Deleting an image or video from the gallery in the Meta AI app will also delete it from the company cloud. The company also says it does not use content from users’ photos and videos to serve advertising or train its AI systems, regardless of cloud media settings.

You can check your cloud media settings in the Meta AI app by going to Settings > Glasses > Glasses Privacy > Cloud Media.

Using the AI ​​features of glasses comes with some pretty significant privacy trade-offs. If you use a Meta AI feature that requires using the camera, like Live AI or simply asking Meta about something you’re looking at, your glasses take a photo for the assistant to analyze. These captures, which are not saved on your camera roll, are stored and backed up by Meta.

Meta also employs third-party contractors, who review and label these captures, in order to train their AI systems. “When people share content with Meta AI, we sometimes use contractors to review that data in an effort to improve people’s experience, as many other companies do,” a Meta spokesperson told Woozad. “We take steps to filter this data to protect people’s privacy and prevent review of identifying information.”

Of course, Meta doesn’t make this clear when you use one of its AI features. But it’s important to remember that whenever you ask Meta AI to “see” what you see, that image may be seen by an unknown number of third parties. And while Meta says it’s trying to protect personal data, there are reports that third-party contractors have been tasked with reviewing the highly sensitive images captured by users’ glasses.

This is especially relevant for people who use the company’s smart glasses for accessibility, a use case that Meta has strongly encouraged. Multimodal features like Live AI can be particularly useful for people who are blind or visually impaired. But people who use these features more often also need to be aware of how their recordings are captured and processed by the company. It’s probably a good idea to avoid using AI features when processing documents containing personal information or in environments where you would otherwise be uncomfortable being recorded.

As with using camera-based AI features, voice interactions are also less private by default. Every time you interact with Meta’s assistant, your glasses record what you say and create a transcript that is automatically recorded by Meta. The company used to allow smart glasses owners to opt out of having these recordings stored in its cloud, but that’s no longer the case if you live in the US (EU-based users can do so, however, thanks to stricter privacy laws in the region.)

According to Meta, it uses both machine learning and “trained reviewers” ​​to process these recordings and transcriptions. In its privacy policy, the company notes that human raters are “particularly useful in identifying voice interactions that machines are likely to misinterpret” and that evaluating users’ voice interactions helps the company improve Meta AI’s accuracy over time.

The company further notes that its glasses also occasionally record audio snippets by mistake when they mistakenly detect a wake word. The company says it labels these “false awakenings” and deletes the recordings and transcripts from its systems within 90 days of detection.

But even though Meta doesn’t allow most users to opt out of this process completely, it is possible to manually delete these recordings, whether they are intentional interactions or “false wake-ups.” You can view all audio files collected by Meta in the Meta AI app by going to Settings > Glasses > Glasses Privacy > Voice Activity Log. You can then choose to “delete all” or go through your recordings one by one (you’ll probably be surprised how many are there, even if you don’t talk to Meta AI much.)

Unfortunately, yes, and there are many, many cases of people behaving badly while doing so. When used as intended, Meta’s smart glasses feature an LED light that flashes when you take a photo and flashes when you record a video. If you block the light, such as with a piece of electrical tape, the glasses have a built-in feature that prevents the camera from being used.

However, as I recently reported, there are ways around this problem. There are a number of companies selling aftermarket accessories intended to block light without triggering Meta’s detection systems. There is also a thriving market for DIY services and modifications to physically break LEDs using drills and other tools.

More recently, Meta has attempted to preempt some of these behaviors. The company has released a software update that disables the camera if it detects that the LED has been physically tampered with. Instagram also banned people who posted videos of themselves harassing people while wearing modified glasses. The company says it continues to take action against people who violate its terms of service, but has not yet completely thwarted these monsters.