When Meta made its Ray-Ban smart glasses available for preorder, it made clear one thing: Your privacy will be secure. “Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are built with privacy at their core,” read a statement at the time, released in September 2023. The marketing was unambiguous about your privacy, and as a result, you might have seen people wearing them around town, in a Super Bowl ad, or even at a court proceeding about child safety on Meta’s own platforms. ICE agents were even reportedly wearing them in the field.
What you might not have seen is, well, yourself caught in the crosshairs of the glasses’ camera. Now, a new report—and a federal lawsuit that quickly followed—alleges the company is even less transparent than those thick lenses, claiming the company is quietly routing users’ footage to human workers overseas instead of its AI models. These workers have seen everything from people undressing to sensitive financial documents, and it’s thanks to users who opt into data sharing for AI training purposes.
