Woman covertly filmed by Meta AI smart glasses raises privacy and consent concerns: “I had no say”

A woman discovered she had been secretly filmed by a man wearing Meta’s AI-powered smart glasses when friends and people she hadn’t talked to in years sent her a video posted on social media. 

“It went viral. Across all platforms, probably over 200,000 views,” Toluwa Omitowoju said. 

It’s a growing trend with content creators increasingly using wearable AI tech to record everyday people in prank pickup line videos – often without their consent. 

Omitowoju was shocked and displeased to see herself in one such video, which has since been taken down. She had no idea she was being filmed, nor was she asked before the video was posted.

“I had no say,” Omitowoju said, adding that other women have shared similar experiences with her.

“It was a lot worse. It was to the point where they don’t even know who filmed them and yet it’s being posted online under a burner account,” she said.

Adam Mosseri, the head of Meta-owned social media giant Instagram, said the platform is cracking down on videos that harass people or invade their privacy.

“If you’re posting content that is taking advantage of people and harassing them, like a lot of these pickup line kind of videos that we’ve heard of and seen recently, then we’re going to take the content down,” he said in July. “We don’t want people to be surreptitiously taking videos of other people and harassing them and then posting them on our platform.”

Meta has come under fire for privacy concerns before.

In May, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation into Ray-Ban Meta glasses, alleging that the glasses could violate personal privacy by using cameras, speakers and more to covertly film people, including in private moments such as bathroom visits.

“Privacy and data protection are core to every product we build at Meta, including Ray-Ban Meta glasses,” Meta said in a statement at the time. 

Meta told CBS News that its glasses have built-in privacy and safety features, including a telltale LED light that turns on when the glasses are recording and software that is supposed to prevent recording if the light is covered or disabled.

CBS News’ Anna Schecter put this feature to the test. She found the disabling mechanism did not appear to work when she covered the light after already starting to record.

A Meta spokesperson told CBS News the tamper detection is designed to prevent recording if the light is covered before pressing record.

“If the glasses detect that the capture LED is covered or obstructed, they will disable capture and prompt the wearer to clear the obstruction,” the company said in a statement to CBS News. 

Meta added it continues to “work to improve this technology.”

Another privacy complication is that most states only require the consent of one person to record an interaction, which means only the person recording has to know. 

Omitowoju said she believes that wearable technology is a huge threat to personal privacy.

“If someone sees a phone in front of their face, they have the opportunity to step away, to approach someone and say, ‘Hey, I don’t want you to record.’ With these smart glasses and the smart technology, you’re taking away the right of refusal,” she said.