As demand for Meta AI glasses explodes, it’s harder to avoid creepy recordings

Key Highlights

• Perhaps most troublingly, Meta recently backpedaled and deleted an unreleased facial recognition system from its smart-glasses app that Wired and EFF revealed had been quietly installed on 50 million phones in June.
• One of the first apps, Nearby Glasses, is available for $2.
• In 2025, the company sold more than 7 million AI glasses--up from 2 million sold in the prior two years combined--then quickly made plans to double its Ray-Ban outputs, Bloomberg reported.
• As millions of people buy into the smart glasses fad each year, the odds are increasing that you could be secretly recorded while simply going about your day.
• Many people “have a deep revulsion to being recorded without their consent, which is understandable,” and that remains “the biggest problem with these glasses,” Quintin said.

AI glasses PSA Ars looks at Zuckoff, the latest free app detecting Meta AI glasses amid privacy backlash.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images Can you tell when someone nearby is wearing Meta AI glasses?

As millions of people buy into the smart glasses fad each year, the odds are increasing that you could be secretly recorded while simply going about your day.

Meta is not the only smart glasses maker, but its AI glasses are by far the most popular.

And as the devices become more common, some public places, including schools, courts, restaurants, and entertainment venues, have begun to ban them.

Even tech lovers have rejected Meta glasses in certain settings.

The hackers behind DEF CON 2026 reportedly banned smart glasses with no exceptions, reminding attendees with prescription pairs to “be sure to pack non-violating eyewear if you need them.

” But a ban is only as effective as the people enforcing it.

Spotting a pair of smart glasses can require tech-savvy security staff, and enforcement may depend on users voluntarily disclosing their devices--or on watchful observers speaking up.

Those bans are an important way to push back against the potential for abuse.

But privacy advocates know that increasing the social friction around nonconsensual recording can’t stop the practice by itself.

Until comprehensive consumer privacy laws are passed, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has warned that Meta seems prepared to make the tech even more invasive in its bid to sell more glasses and stay ahead of rivals in the burgeoning industry.

And as AI advances, EFF staff technologist Cooper Quintin told Ars, potential new features such as facial recognition could raise the stakes further, potentially allowing the devices to be used to create convincing deepfakes or nonconsensual intimate imagery of people who may not be aware that cameras are rolling.

“I think that there are a lot of other concerns there beyond just being recorded without your knowledge,” Quintin told Ars.

EFF has warned that smart glasses makers will likely be tempted to add facial-recognition features unless lawmakers intervene and give people a private right to sue companies whose products violate their biometric privacy rights.

For people unknowingly targeted in secret recordings, the only safety feature Meta provides is nearly “useless,” Quintin told Ars.

A tiny recording light that can be easily covered with a sticker is unlikely to deter bad actors intent on abusing the glasses, whether that’s stalkers or creepy partners secretly recording women in public bathrooms or private bedrooms. The tech has also controversially been used in immigration raids, 404 Media reported, and to harass sex workers and retail workers. And on social media, videos show a range of other unwanted recordings, from relatively inoffensive pranks to more harmful videos featuring bullying or harassment.