Some Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses recorded people’s conversations without the wearer knowing. Recordings took place without users saying the prompt phrase (“Hey, Meta”), in a bug that Meta said has been fixed.
This week, some users reported online that their Ray-Ban Metas were recording without their consent. One person going by Kindly-Audience-137 on Reddit, for example, said this happened to them on three Meta Ray-Bans and had the “Reply without Hey Meta” setting turned off. The person said the Meta AI app “saves audio recordings and text transcripts of these conversations in my conversation history.”
“I think this deserves a serious technical investigation. Customers shouldn’t have to worry about whether their private conversations are being captured if they haven’t intentionally enabled their glasses’ AI assistant,” the Reddit user said.
Android Authority reported the discussions on Tuesday. Later that day, he posted a response from Meta that said:
“This issue has been resolved. Users can manage, view, and delete voice logs of their interactions with Meta AI through Settings at any time.”
Although Meta’s brief message suggests the bug is fixed, the broader privacy issue remains.
Unanswered questions
Meta did not explain what caused the Ray-Ban Metas to record people without the user’s consent. Reddit user Kindly-Audience-137 said he “first noticed this behavior after a recent firmware update,” but Meta did not confirm whether a faulty update caused the bug.
We also don’t know how many Meta smart glasses were affected by the bug. There are a few reports online, but Android Authority said it was unable to reproduce the issue before Meta said it had fixed it.
Ars Technica sent Meta a message asking what it was doing to prevent future bugs like this from recurring and how many devices were affected. We will update this article if we receive a response.
However, even a handful of affected devices are cause for concern.
Before this bug was reported, privacy advocates had already raised many concerns about Meta’s smart glasses, as well as those from other vendors. Beyond the fear that naturally accompanies the release of new technology that includes a microphone and camera, Meta’s glasses pushed the boundaries of privacy even further with their more discreet appearance, sparking concerns about how easily someone could secretly record another person.
Gn tech
