Senators are looking into 'serious privacy risks' with Meta's AI glasses

'Meta's smart glasses have increasingly been implicated in disturbing invasions of privacy.'

Karissa Bell for Engadget

US Senators Ron Wyden (D-Or) and and Edward Markey (D-Ma) are investigating "serious privacy and safety risks" around Meta's AI smart glasses. "Meta's smart glasses have increasingly been implicated in disturbing invasions of users' and bystanders' privacy," the pair wrote in a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, adding that Meta launched the product even after identifying risks to bystander privacy. 

The senators highlighted multiple incidents of Meta's glasses being used in "disturbing" invasions of privacy. It cited both 404 Media and BBC articles about men secretly filming women with Meta's "pervert glasses" while harassing them, then posting the recordings to social media. It also noted that according to other reports and a lawsuit, Meta's AI contractors said they reviewed footage captured by the eyewear showing people undressing and engaging in sexual activity. 

The senators requested that Meta respond to specific questions about accidental camera activation and recording-indicator tampering. They also want to know if the glasses blur faces and license plates for certain AI interactions, like Meta does on Facebook and Instagram. It asked Meta to explain the circumstances that imagery is made accessible to employees or contracts, or when it's used to train AI models. Finally, citing Meta's own documents, it asked the company whether it conducted detailed human rights due diligence and safety testing on its glasses before releasing them. It requested those responses by Thanksgiving (November 26, 2026). 

The list of complaints about Meta's glasses is long. On top of the ones cited by Wyden and Markey, users have said that the glasses were recording their conversations without consent following a firmware update. They've also been spotted on ICE agents during raids, and the New York City Police's counterterrorism unit reportedly raised surveillance concerns about the devices in January this year. Earlier in October, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have banned people from using wearables to secretly record others in private areas of business. 

However, Wyden and Markey seem more determined to hold the social media giant's feet to the fire. "Meta's professed commitment to privacy and preventing intimate image abuse rings hollow if the company cannot demonstrate meaningful steps to prevent its own products and practices from facilitating those harms," the senators told Zuckerberg.