'I thought he was perfect - until I found out he was wearing Meta Glasses' Woman’s horror date sparks safety & surveillance fears

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Everything about the date suggested there should have been a second.

“He was goofy and sweet; he owned a business,” said the woman, whom LBC is calling Kelly.

She recalled: “I didn't notice until we bumped into my friend, and he texted me saying: ‘Kelly, your date is wearing Meta Glasses.’”

The newest addition to Silicon Valley’s ever-evolving line of wearable tech hit the market in 2023 when Mark Zuckerberg’s company announced their collaboration with Ray-Ban. 

Now, a high-profile partnership with Kylie Jenner, one of the biggest influencers in the world, has put conversations about the ethics of Meta Glasses back in the public eye.

So far, the product has had a mixed reception, sparking concerns from critics about surveillance and privacy - even earning the online nickname 'Pervert glasses’.

However, some have found the new AI features useful and the snazzy redesign of the frame much easier on the eye.

Kelly hadn’t given much thought to the glasses until she was sitting across from them; and was hit with the thought that he might have been filming their date.

Her date told her the glasses were “mostly for recording and photography”, but her friends were more sceptical.“He could have been using AI to make you have your top off or something,” one told her.

“You’re going to be on some incel forum,” another said, quickly nicknaming her date “Meta Man”.

“I asked him if they were 'on'”, she said. “He said they were mostly for recording and photography, but he forgot to charge them, so they weren't on. But how would I know?”

This comes as the popularity of content showing women being filmed without their consent and shared on social media rises, to be torn apart by millions. 

Meta says it has a built-in failsafe against this - when the device is recording, a flashing white light appears.

But, Kelly says the uncertainty was enough to kill any attraction.

"It gave me the ick,” she said. "If he wasn't wearing them, maybe he would've got a second date, I’m not going to lie."What bothered Kelly wasn't simply the technology itself.

"It's embarrassing - and the fact that they weren't even really because he needed them. It felt more like a stylistic choice. 

"To choose those as your glasses... and to wear them on a first date without saying, 'By the way, these aren't recording you? 

"I just couldn't get past it.”

Since releasing the glasses, Meta has devoted a concerted effort to shifting the conversation away from privacy and towards fashion. In an attempt to change the trajectory of the product, the company decided to collaborate with titan of the female market: Kylie Jenner. 

In July, the company announced its launch with the Kardashian Billionaire, who boasts almost 400 million followers on Instagram.

The high-tech specs boast features including audio speakers to make phone calls and listen to music, live translation for over 20 languages, visual recognition, as well as a custom-voiced Meta AI assistant voiced by Ms Jenner herself. Prices for her collection start at £359.

Grace, 24, told LBC the problem is that they are deliberately designed to blend in. 

"They're marketed as a cute, trendy accessory, and they look like normal Ray-Bans, and the marketing has clearly worked very well. 

"But that's also the problem: the styling makes people forget they're wearing a camera on their face.”

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'Profit over principle'

Cyberpsychologist Dr Catherine Knibbs told LBC she is concerned about the way Meta has shifted their promotion of the glasses in a bid to ameliorate public opinion.

"What Mr Zuckerberg has done is pretty much try a new marketing spin to make them into a desirable fashion item, because fashion always sells.

"That’s why Kylie Jenner got brought in. They produced a pair with a diamante at the front to make them more appealing to the younger generation.

"There are huge numbers of celebrities and influencers who will be getting money and brand deals.”

Dr Knibbs added it’s not just Kylie Jenner used to flog these items. Actors such as Chris Pratt and Chris Hemsworth, as well as K-pop star Jennie Kim from BLACKPINK, have also promoted AI Smart Glasses.

“What concerns me is if people don't understand the risks, they're going to promote an item that they think is fashionware without understanding the sinister side of what they're going to be and are already being used for.

“They're allegedly being used for harassment, primarily of women at this stage as attested by many social media videos claiming so, and that's a privacy rights issue. They are a cybersecurity issue. They are a privacy issue for children who are under systems where their identification needs to be kept private such as care or witness protection, when again allegedly many social media accounts highlight identification tools are used with these forms of technology.

“The recording of children and adults for sexual harms such as abuse, coercion, rape deeply worries me, and I see no visible or robust safeguards yet in this space to prevent such recordings."

Dr Knibbs added that what also concerns her is where the data harvested by these products could ultimately go.

“The data that is being picked up by them is allegedly being transmitted to third-party companies who are not based in the EU or UK, therefore don't follow data protection laws."

She concluded: “These are the biggest nightmare so far in terms of the technology movement.

“Profit over principle has yet again tainted this new technological progression.”

'Normalisation of surveillance'

Dr Leonie Maria Tanczer is an Associate Professor in International Security and Emerging Technologies at University College London. She believes the risks of these glasses "far outweigh the benefits".

"They are incredibly intrusive and go against the basic norms we should have around recording other people. How can I trust that someone I meet on the street, sit near on the Tube, or interact with in public is not recording me?

"We already have this problem with phones, but at least with a phone there is some chance you can see what is happening and intervene — as we have seen in cases of upskirting and non-consensual photography on public transport. 

“With camera-enabled glasses, recording becomes less conspicuous, more seamless, and much harder for bystanders to recognise and challenge in the moment.

"This feels like a marketing gimmick, but it is also part of a much bigger normalisation of surveillance. 

"We already have to remind people not to record others on flights, and now we are moving towards devices that make recording even easier and less visible. We need to remind people that they cannot just hit record whenever something happens because they want to capture content for TikTok, YouTube, or another viral clip.

"This is particularly concerning for women and girls. There are so many situations where people are vulnerable, and those moments can and will be exploited. 

"People can be mocked, bullied, sexualised, laughed at, or harassed because someone decided to record and upload them without consent.

"Once footage is recorded, streamed, or uploaded to the Internet, the harm has often already happened. Saying that someone can complain, sue, or seek justice later is not enough when the content has already been widely shared online. 

"Regulators need to step in proactively, not retrospectively, and companies should not be allowed to put these products on the market unless they can meaningfully protect the privacy, consent, and safety of non-users."

'Stalk, surveil and control'

Emma Pickering, Head of the Tech-Facilitated Abuse and Economic Empowerment Team at Refuge, said: “Refuge supports countless survivors subjected to tech-facilitated abuse every single day.

"Time and again, we see what happens when devices go to market without proper consideration of how they might be used to harm women and girls.

“It is currently far too easy for perpetrators to weaponise smart accessories, and our sector-leading Technology-Facilitated Abuse and Economic Empowerment Team is seeing the devastating consequences of this every day.

"Only recently, Refuge warned of an increase in emerging forms of abuse involving AI and wearable technology – including smart glasses – with this technology increasingly being misused by abusers to stalk, surveil and control survivors.

"It also threatens the safety of all women and girls in public, facilitating harassment, surveillance and other abuse.  

"As wearable technology becomes embedded in our lives, protections for survivors must keep pace.

"It is unacceptable for the safety and wellbeing of women and girls to be treated as an afterthought once technology has been developed and distributed. Their safety must be a foundational principle, shaping both the design of wearable technology – including features such as this one –  and the regulatory frameworks that govern it.”

A Meta Spokesperson said: “People use our glasses because they're genuinely helpful – from listening to music, to live translation or hands-free calls. For those wearing them and the people around them, trust matters. That's why we built privacy into our AI glasses from the ground up.

“For example, every pair has a capture LED that blinks when you take a photo or video that you can save or share, it can't be turned off, and if someone covers or damages the LED, the camera is disabled. We will keep strengthening our protections as our glasses become even more capable.”

When quizzed about what stops a Meta Glasses wearer from filming someone posting the footage without their knowledge, Adam Moserri, Head of Instagram at Meta, said in a previous interview: “AI glasses have cameras in them, and right here you can see that there's a little light that lights up if someone is actually filming. 

“So we can't stop people from filming other people, but we can try to make sure that that light is on if they are filming. We now actually have the glasses basically stop working if you drill that light out, because we saw that people were trying to drill that light out. 

“Plus, 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, then we're going to take the content down.

"We don't want people to be surreptitiously taking videos of other people and harassing them and then posting them on our platform. So we're trying to fight that every way we can.”