Meta addresses ‘pervert glasses’ reputation with a privacy fix and a new marketing campaign

Meta is updating its AI-powered smart glasses to close a loophole that allowed wearers to keep recording after covering the front-facing LED. Alex Himel, Meta’s vice president of augmented reality, writes in a post on Threads that “the camera will now stop working if the light is covered during a recording.”

The company’s line of smart glasses already disables their built-in cameras if someone covers the LED capture light, which blinks to alert others that you’re recording or taking a picture. However, some wearers found that they can bypass these restrictions by covering the LED light after they started recording. This latest fix comes a little over a month after Meta updated its glasses to turn off its camera when wearers physically tamper with the capture light.

“We’re going to keep rolling out updates like this to make sure the capture LED can reliably alert bystanders when photos or videos are being captured for someone’s gallery,” Himel writes. “Only a tiny minority of people try to get around these protections, and the fact they have to go to these lengths shows our efforts are working.”

Meta’s smart glasses have sparked concerns surrounding privacy and harassment, with some wearers recording others without their consent and filming social media “pranks” on random bystanders. These concerns, coupled with a report about Meta adding a facial recognition feature, have culminated in a global campaign against the smart glasses.

But now, Meta is trying to spread “awareness” about its LED capture light by launching its own campaign in communities “where glasses sales have been popular,” Meta spokesperson Albert Aydin tells The Verge. One billboard, which is currently up in Los Angeles, shows Meta’s smart glasses alongside a caption that says, “The camera lets you capture the moment. The light lets everyone around you know when you do.” A video shared by Meta similarly says that the capture LED “signals when the glasses are capturing photos and videos,” and that “no light” means “no capture.”