Much like Google’s infamous Google Glass smart glasses, Meta’s camera-equipped AI Glasses have turned into a widely derided gadget associated with horrendous public behavior and unwanted surveillance.
The invasive spectacles, which are designed to effectively be indistinguishable from an ordinary pair of Ray Ban sunglasses, have been misused by creeps, pickup artists, “manfluencers,” juvenile pranksters, and even high school bullies.
All that awful behavior has garnered them the pejorative “pervert glasses,” with owners increasingly opting to leave them at home because they’re unwilling to be seen wearing them in public.
Now, a patent Meta filed in February and was granted last week suggests that the company is painfully aware of the privacy nightmare of its own creation. The patent outlines “secure hardware-enforced sensor privacy systems” and a “mute or lock” switch that can shut down “one or more sensors” in consumer-facing products.
