Meta is rolling out another privacy update for its AI glasses, this time targeting people who cover the capture light after a video has already started recording.
The small white LED on the front of Meta’s glasses flashes whenever the camera is taking a photo or recording video. It is supposed to give anyone nearby a visible warning that they may be on camera.
However, users have found ways to obscure or physically modify that light. Meta’s latest update is designed to stop the camera from recording if someone begins filming and then covers the LED.
This closes a potential loophole in the tamper-detection protections Meta announced in July. Beginning with the second generation of its glasses, Meta says the camera is disabled when the device detects that the capture LED has been blocked. The company later expanded that protection to detect attempts to physically alter or destroy the light.
Now the glasses are also expected to recognize when the LED becomes covered during an active recording session and shut the camera down.
Meta is going after tampering services
The technical update is part of a much broader effort to discourage people from using Meta’s glasses to record others without their knowledge.
Some companies had offered services that modified or concealed the capture light. Meta says businesses offering those services have begun shutting down because its glasses now deactivate the camera when tampering is detected.
The company has also removed posts offering instructions or services for disabling the LED.
Meta says it has taken down thousands of posts connected to harassment, pick-up artist videos and prank content, while disabling accounts involved in that behavior. It has also blocked searches and hashtags associated with violating content, including “rizz,” “pick up artist” and “cold approach,” in an attempt to make those videos harder to find and share.
Meta wants everyone to recognize the light
Wearing a camera on your face makes it far easier to film someone without holding up a phone, particularly if that person does not recognize what the flashing white light means.
Alongside the update, Meta is launching an awareness campaign explaining what the capture LED is and what it means when it starts flashing.
The campaign will include online videos and images as well as large billboards in communities where sales of the glasses have been especially strong. One is already running in Los Angeles.
That education may be just as important as the technical safeguard. The LED can only provide a useful warning if the people around the wearer understand why it is blinking.
Meta’s glasses are becoming far more common, but they are still unfamiliar enough that someone across a restaurant, playground or commuter train may not realize they are looking at a wearable camera.
The latest update will not settle every privacy concern surrounding smart glasses. Someone can still record people who have not explicitly agreed to appear in a video, just as they can with a smartphone. But making the light harder to defeat, while helping people recognize it, should make covert recording more difficult.
