Could Meta’s ‘pervert glasses’ be banned across the UK? – The Latest

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1:04They've been described as pervert glasses and there have been viral videos of women being filmed without their knowledge. I got filmed on metal glasses. I'm that a gym. Hi, I'm 17. Didn't know you were filming this. There's been numerous women who've been coming out and saying, I was recorded without my consent and I saw it later on social media. I think what's interesting is their biggest intervention has been to get Kylie Jenner involved. These smart glasses have been around for a while. They've been concerned around for a while. And then they're like, OK, actually, we need to maybe convince women not to be afraid of surveillance, but to embrace it.

1:36How much are we willing to sacrifice for convenience? From The Guardians today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hoff. We have been seeing and hearing so much about these meta glasses. There is this massive advertising campaign that is fronted by Kylie Jenner. Kirsty Major your deputy opinion editor you've been looking into this for us I understand that you have a pair or you've tried a pair I did not have a pair I was lent a pair for a video so I have worn them I have experienced the Ray-Ban Meta okay you know immersive experience yeah but you weren't persuaded to make the purchase okay so first of all what are they how does it work and what are your thoughts on wearing them so the simplest way to think about them is they're a smartphone that you put on your face right whatever you can do in your smartphone you can do on these glasses so you can make a call you can send a message you can get the ai assistant to answer a question for you but most controversially you can record people and take photographs so that's where the friction has come in because i mean creepy people on the internet will always be creepy people on the internet and they'll find ways to use this technology to do pretty creepy things and so there's been numerous women who've been coming out and saying i was recorded without my consent and I saw it later on social media so that's sort of been the the sticking point.

2:58Yeah yeah well we'll talk more about that because that is becoming a really big part of this conversation isn't it about the sort of safeguards that are needed but I suppose as a bit of a sort of like technological geriatric what is the point like why why would you need them? So what's interesting is for some people they are actually quite useful the fact that they're hands-free means that if you are disabled you can use the features more easily okay blind people can use them to scan for obstacles in the road so they can actually be like incredibly useful and enabling for a lot of people yeah but it's not those people who are using them often okay it's uh content creators who might have some sort of nefarious like aims for them yeah so that's sort of the problem well that's good to hear that there are some some positive uh aspects of these glasses for people living with disabilities.

3:51But as you say, there is also huge controversy, particularly amongst women. They've been described as pervert glasses and there have been viral videos of women being filmed covertly without their knowledge. And as a result of that, they've been banned in some venues such as pubs. Do you think we're going to see that kind of widening? Yep, so we've seen it in Wetherspoons, in a lot of London restaurants. they've been banned totally and that's to protect the privacy of the patrons and i mean i don't know about you but if i feel like someone's watching me while i eat like yeah i'll get like indigestion like it's horrible like you wouldn't be able to relax and sort of let go with your friends so i think that's really reasonable and also they've been banned in a lot of places with kids so for example the nursery that i send my daughter to no smart glasses allowed which is really important it's not only women it's what there are children out there who are being recorded without their consent and you just don't know what happens with that footage so there should be spaces that are free of these glasses and I guess I mean so the glasses look like sort of standard Ray-Bans don't they are they easily identifiable because is it possible that you would walk into a pub wearing a pair of glasses that just look like Ray-Bans and you know get away with it I mean the whole point is that they're discreet they're seamless yeah and they do look like normal glasses I try the pair on and they are just like normal ray-bans they feel a bit sort of lighter a bit like comedy glasses okay i don't know why but apart from two little cameras here they look like normal glasses okay and so when they're filming these little cameras are supposed to light up but people on the internet found ways around this uh there were people who were coming up with um hacks that you could do on the glasses to disable it i meant to say that if these cameras are disabled that it will just stop everything from working but a lot of people have been saying that they've been filled without their consent and they haven't seen the light on so yeah I think that's kind of still being debated yeah yeah it sounds like there are there is work that needs to be done there um there are lots of suggestions online particularly again amongst women about ways to avoid any footage that's taken without your consent being posted to social media what are some of the the suggestions that are being put forward to to prevent that so people are saying you know you can play a copyrighted song like a disney song and that means they can't use the footage but they could probably use the footage without the audio okay you know i'm sure there's ways around that and there was a hobby hacker who came up with this app where you can scan for glasses in the sort of near uh the location around you and so i took it out around king's cross and it was kind of freaky though because you you could see on the app when it had notified you that there were glasses around but it was hard to see who was wearing them so you're sort of looking around like looking for someone in glasses but you can't see them and it just gives you this sense of like uneasiness and being surveilled and even then the app says don't approach anyone because you know you could be harassing them so really it's quite difficult to know what to do I mean I actually think this is the point where regulators need to step in they need to make them really obvious they need to be like a certain color they need not to be seamless you need to be able to spot them in the wild really easily so that is probably an issue that I think needs to be taken up yeah which obviously meta would want them to be aesthetically pleasing and stylish so people do want to wear them out and about but yeah they need to like neon green flashing yeah pink and then no one would wear them and so how has meta responded to all these various criticisms and concerns about privacy?

7:32So it will point again and again to the fact that the glasses light up. And then in its guidelines, it says that the glasses shouldn't be used for harassment, infringing on privacy, or for filming sensitive content. But I think what's interesting is their biggest intervention has been to get Kylie Jenner involved. So, you know, these smart glasses have been around for a while. They've been concerned around for a while. and then they're like okay actually we need to maybe convince women not to be afraid of surveillance but to embrace it and it's really interesting even the advertising has Kylie Jenner in these you know quite chic glasses and they're pixelated on the adverts or reminiscent of like nudity they're sort of evoking the fact that nefarious things have been done with these glasses but actually it's kind of cool and edgy.

8:16So Meta famously put a massive amount of investment into the so-called metaverse, this idea that Mark Zuckerberg became obsessed with, that people would wear these virtual headsets and live in a sort of virtual reality. But the idea completely tanked, and Meta has reportedly lost 80 billion on that product alone, which even for a company of Meta's size is a really sizable chunk of money. But this venture seems to be going a lot better. how many of the glasses have been sold? And I think it's worth noting that other companies like Google are creating similar products, which suggests that's the direction of travel.

8:59Yep, so there's been 7 million sold. But to just put that into perspective, there's about 7 billion smartphones in the world. So actually smartphones are still the dominant technology. I think what's interesting about this though, and this is what you're pointing to here, is that they are trying to make AI more seamless and more integrated into our everyday life. And I think it comes down to that question which we ask ourselves whenever there's a new technology. And it's like, how much are we willing to sacrifice for convenience? And I do think the privacy implications of the glasses is maybe a step too far.

9:32I mean, I still think we're seeing this fight being played out. But right now, I'm not sure that Meta's going to win on this one. Okay, it'll be really interesting to see. Kirsty, thank you so much. Thank you. That's it for today. My huge thanks again to Kirsty Major, The Guardian's deputy opinion editor. And I really recommend listening to our sister podcast, Politics Weekly America. Jonathan Friedland will be looking at how President Trump has consolidated such enormous power and what it could mean for the United States and the world. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest. The Latest next week is taking a short summer break, but Morning Today in Focus will be in your feeds as usual.

10:12Have a lovely weekend. This episode was produced by Bryony Moore and Sam Gruet. The senior producer was Ryan Ramgobin. It was presented by me, Lucy Hough. This is The Guardian.