Some owners of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses reported this week that the devices recorded audio without their consent, raising fresh questions about the privacy safeguards on Meta’s camera- and microphone-equipped eyewear. One user, posting on Reddit as Kindly-Audience-137, said the behavior occurred across three pairs of the glasses and that the “Respond without Hey Meta” setting was turned off. According to that user, the Meta AI app stores audio recordings and text transcripts of the captured conversations in their conversation history. The user called for a serious technical investigation and said customers should not have to wonder whether private conversations are being captured when the glasses’ AI assistant was not intentionally activated.
Android Authority reported on the discussions Tuesday and later that day published Meta’s response. Meta said the issue has been resolved and that people can manage, review, and delete voice logs of their interactions with Meta AI through settings at any time. The company did not say what caused the glasses to record without user consent. The Reddit user said the behavior was first noticed after a recent firmware update, but Meta has not confirmed whether a faulty update was responsible.
It also remains unclear how many devices were affected. Only a few reports have appeared online, and Android Authority said it could not replicate the problem before Meta announced the fix. Ars Technica contacted Meta to ask how many devices were affected and what the company is doing to prevent similar bugs, and said it would update its reporting if the company responded.
The incident lands amid longstanding concerns from privacy advocates about Meta’s smart glasses and similar products from other vendors. The glasses’ inconspicuous design has prompted worry about how easily someone could secretly record another person. Meta has previously pointed to the indicator light that activates when the glasses record audio or video as a safeguard, but the bug indicates recording can occur inadvertently even with that light on.
Meta has continued to push devices that place microphones and cameras in homes and on faces while facing fears that they could be used for nonconsensual recordings. Contractors for Sama, a data annotation company headquartered in Kenya, have said they viewed footage shot by Ray-Ban Metas apparently without the wearer or others in the video knowing. A report by Swedish journalists this year interviewed more than 30 Sama workers and described privacy-sensitive data flowing into the company’s systems, with workers viewing private activities. In the US, the report led to a lawsuit seeking class action certification and an investigation by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
In August, Meta updated its smart glasses so they will not record if the indicator light is covered. Some potential privacy violations involving Ray-Ban Metas depend on a bad human actor, but the recent glitch and the Sama workers’ accounts point to the possibility that well-meaning users could record inadvertently as well. Privacy concerns have also led to proposed legislation, including in Norway, which is considering a temporary ban.
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