Meta might be trying to make its smart glasses less creepy, but if recent reports are any indication, it’s still got some work to do. It turns out, as Engadget details, that the capture LED on the company’s smart glasses—intended to inform people that they’re being recorded—can easily be obscured.
In a test with a pair of Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, Engadget found that the indicator light can be blocked, to the point that it’s barely noticeable, with cheap stickers purchased online. To be clear, the use of stickers isn’t a new phenomenon—we’ve reported on it before—but it’s especially unfortunate considering Meta’s recent efforts to bolster the effectiveness of this exact LED.
Last month, Meta rolled out an update meant to prevent its smart glasses from recording if the LED is tampered with or destroyed. That update, it’s worth noting, was in response to people doing the latter. NBC’s Joanna Stern reported that contractors (on Facebook Marketplace, no less) were taking payment in exchange for completely drilling the light out, allowing people to record photos and videos LED-free.
Whether that update has been effective in preventing tampering remains unclear. Recent videos posted to YouTube since the update suggest that some people have still been able to record after drilling out the light, even after installing the mandatory software on their smart glasses, though we haven’t verified these claims ourselves. Some commentators on this YouTube video also say glasses they’ve drilled the light out of no longer work after the recent update.
“We built our AI glasses with privacy in mind from the start, and that includes designing the camera so it won’t function if the LED is covered or doesn’t work. Products and people that have found ways around this built-in privacy protection violate our policies, so we’re exploring ways to strengthen our ability to detect such tampering and disable the camera,” a Meta spokesperson told Gizmodo in a statement.
“Additionally, we remove ads, posts, and Marketplace listings that promote tampering services, and we will take action against violators—up to and including banning their accounts.”
But either way, it looks as though there may still be easily accessible and effective ways to obscure Meta’s capture LED, despite the company’s recent efforts to bolster privacy measures. Meta has maintained that it’s continuing to make its smart glasses more “trustworthy” and “safer,” but whether it can keep up with people who are determined to use a pair for unsavory purposes is another question entirely. Where there’s a will to be a glasshole, there’s likely a way.
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