Can smart glasses ever NOT be creepy? Why Meta, Apple, and Samsung want cameras on your face

Apple's probably the only company that might be able to get away with full-on proper glasses with cameras and everything. People are so much more conscious of the fact that there's a camera on your left and a blinking light on the right. It makes the people around me nervous. We have not yet addressed some of the glaring concerns people have about the technology we have now in smart glasses. It's hard to convince them that they absolutely need these smart glasses. Then you've got your standard array of AI glasses. Whoever else wants to be involved in that party, they're welcome to come. Mark Zuckerberg has said that there is this general goal to have always-on AI. Phone, iPhone, AI phone, robot phone. It's a completely ridiculous product, but in the best possible way. If you can put a gimbal in the back of a phone, you can put a little robot arm that can reach out and scratch your nose for you. Or a fan. Welcome everyone to the 34th episode of the TechRadar podcast. My name is Josephine Watson, and I'm joined today as always by Hamish Hexer. As well as Axel Mertz. Hello. Lance Elonov. Hello. As well as friend of the show, Jason England. Hello. This week, we'll be talking through the latest big news from Google and its Pixel 11 launch, including how the new Pixel 11 Pro Fold stacks up against competition like the recently released Samsung Galaxy Fold 8 and Fold 8 Ultra. We'll also be deep diving into the controversy surrounding smart glasses like Ray-Ban Metas, as increasing fallout puts the hardware at the heart of public anxiety around tech and surveillance. Before we dive into this episode, make sure to scan this QR code to learn more about becoming a TechRadar Insider. And yes, I've turned you into a QR code again. Membership is completely free and gives you access to exclusive perks, rewards, and more. But first off, here's Hamish with this episode's edition of In Case You Missed It. Thanks, Josie. I'm no longer a QR code. Since our last episode, Google has treated us to its Made by Google Pixel 11 event, showcasing new phones, the Pixel Watch 5, and a Pixel Tag. The highlight was, well, the highlight. A new LED array that'll keep you informed of important notifications, even if your phone is face-down on the table. Though that innovation has nothing on Honor's latest phone update, with the robot phone effectively strapping a gimbal to the back of a Magic 8 Pro. The gimbal can tuck itself away when it isn't in use, and based on our brief tests, it's pretty darn effective, producing dynamic 4K video that'll leave content creators outside of China wishing they could get their hands on this gadget. Just like how non-Netflix subscribers will be wishing they could tune in to the Grand Theft Auto 6 and Extended Look, debuting exclusively on the streaming platform. Take-Two Interactive's CEO defended the move, saying the trailer will come to YouTube just six hours later. However, given the rabid excitement for this title, I can understand why fans are frustrated that new updates will be locked behind a paywall, even if only briefly. Lastly, the UK and parts of Europe were treated to a solar eclipse, and photographers took their chance to capture some truly incredible shots as the moon covered the sun. Later in the episode, we'll be discussing the dangers of cameras, but it's always nice to be reminded of the joy and beauty technology can deliver. Thank you very much, Hamish. It's been a little while since we've been in the studio, so lots of ground to cover. Let's kick off with a look back at the recent Pixel 11 launch. So Axel, could you run us through some of the headlines there? Yeah, I mean, in terms of hardware, there wasn't all that much to talk about, at least that's exciting this year. But we've got four new phones, the Pixel 11, 11 Pro, 11 Pro XL, 11 Pro Fold. But if you line them up all against their respective predecessors, honestly, it's actually hard to tell the difference. And I know we say that a lot, but genuinely, I had to look a few times to tell the difference. But I'm fine with that, honestly, because I think this kind of design language that Google's been running with since the 9 is pretty effective. It's very modern, looks really cool. I wasn't really clamoring for any particular design upgrades. But at least for the non-folding models, the camera bar at the back is now all glass. It's thinner, it stretches across. And there's this highlight feature that you mentioned, Hamish, which is kind of like an LED sensor on the back, which essentially tells you who's calling you at any given time. And I think it flashes when Gemini is active. And when I saw it for the first time, I was a bit like, is that it? Is there anything else it can do? And Google did say that other things are coming. But I think whatever this LED is able to do in the future, I don't think that's a must-upgrade feature by any metric for anyone to get. But it's cool, I guess. Nothing phone's had a similar thing a few years ago. And it is something new and interesting that they can put in an ad campaign, I guess. But the cameras are better on every model. I think the main sensors are larger. I don't think they're in terms of megapixels, but the size is a bit bigger. You get twice as much base storage across the board, which is always good because 128 gigabytes is just way too low for anyone in this day and age. And interestingly, the 11 Pro actually comes with four gigabytes less RAM this year, which I think is the first time we're kind of seeing this RAM crisis issue bleed into big brand products. I can't think of an example where a product's come out that's had that much less RAM than before. And I don't think, you know, 16 gigabytes of RAM, which is what the 10 series had, is kind of too much for most people anyway. But it is kind of crazy that a flagship product has that degree, fewer RAMs, less RAM, I don't know. And Google software has always been the cleanest. And we've kind of talked about Pixel phones as being the best at AI and the best at software. So I don't know whether that's going to be true anymore. We have to kind of test out the new features. And then last, we'll talk about the folds in a minute, but I think there was the Pixel tag, which is kind of Google's take on an AirTag essentially. And then a lot of those Gemini intelligence features that were announced back at the Android show in March, I think. So it's kind of like smaller hardware changes, necessary stuff, I guess, in the sense of the storage and things like that. But these software features, again, they look interesting and cool, but I don't think a lot of them are unique to the 11 series. The tag, for instance, will work with, you know, Pixel's five generations back or something like that. So this is definitely not a kind of revolutionary generation of Pixels that you should upgrade from if you own a 10. But again, we can't expect crazy innovation stuff every year. So it is what it is. And you said there as well about not wishing for any major changes. The one change I was hoping for was that those horrible edges on the fold would just be solved. I hate the sort of contrast of the curve to the square. Well, I was going to ask you, Lance, about the fold, because I haven't actually used the fold yet. But you, I saw your headline. It's again, small changes, but worthwhile changes. Yeah, I mean, it's always been, it's been a nice phone. It's been a nice folding phone. It is, it operates in the shadow of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, which is so thin and, you know, exciting and has really great cameras. But this is so much lighter. I mean, you really like noticeably lighter. And they really just all of these, these refinement, like the size of the cover screen, they made it bigger by basically reducing the size of the border around it. And that's a real, that's a visual difference. That's something you notice right away. And you're like, oh, so it, it looks prettier. The, the back, that, that giant camera island is shrunk a little bit. It feels better. It looks better. And, you know, so it's generally, it's just, it's a series of refinements for what was already a good phone and not for nothing. It costs the same as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, you know, the new sort of passport size foldable that they have. So they're both in the U.S. 1899, but you get more cameras. You get better cameras on the Pixel and, you know, you get all of the Gemini stuff baked in there. But I'm still, you know, I'm in the process of, of really putting it through its paces. I kind of agree with Axel on that, that highlight. It's like, okay, that's cool. I mean, how often am I like, is my phone sort of face down? It's like, okay, I kind of get it, but it feels a little bit like a gimmick. And yeah, I think we sort of already mentioned as well, software maybe felt like the side where some more changes were coming in. And that's especially true in the Pixel Watch 5, because now you've got breathing emergency detection, blood pressure trends, insulin resistance trends, and AI strength generated training plan. The last of which is my absolute highlight, because it means we got to see Lance take on a Rocky style strength training course in one of our TikToks, which was brilliant. How was trying those features out, Lance? What do you think about what Google's doing in the health space? The reason I wanted to do that, that tryout is because, you know, my own workout revolves sort of core weight training, you know, and stuff that I've struggled to properly track on my Apple Watch. So the very, you know, sort of granular way that you could sort of set up these workouts with the Pixel Watch 5, I was actually impressed by it. So I was like, oh, well, let's try out all these things. I didn't know I'd be jumping up on a box or anything. Which is a video I do not enjoy watching at all, like my skinny little legs popping up and down. But you really, you felt like it was, it felt a little bit more like a personal trainer. So because it was so connected to each thing, to sort of each rep and the different kinds of things. And I liked how you can tailor it and, you know, using the intelligence to tailor a workout based on injuries or anything else about you, I think that's actually really smart. And I've always liked the Pixel Watch in that it's, the design is really attractive. It's one of the best looking smartwatches I've seen. So I think they, those, that and all the health changes that they're making there are some of the more impactful things that are happening on the Pixel side. And where the hardware side might not be changing so much, that's something that does come up in our comments quite a lot when you then contrast it with the likes of Honor, which you've just been to visit out in China. So you've seen the Honor robot phone in action. Tell us a little bit about how that was. I mean, it's a completely ridiculous product, but in the best possible way. You know, it's like clearly a very niche product for video creators. And there are lots of questions about how practical it is, whether it would work over here, for instance. It's only available in China for now. But because it's so different to anything we've seen before, it's really kind of captured the imagination as a sort of sci-fi turned reality product. Like we would, we posted some videos on TikTok and Facebook, I think. And they just went crazy. They went bananas with people kind of dunking on the US saying you would never get this in the US, you know, regulation so far behind this, that, and the other. But genuinely, it is a cool little product and it works. When they announced it back in, I think, last year, October, it was a concept phone. And Honor likes to do that. They like to just announce things to say that, look at what we're planning, look how far... The handbag phone as well. Yeah, which is a similar thing. And then I think at MWC, you saw it, but on a sort of podium. Look, don't touch. So I was like, okay, you've made it, but does it work? Yeah. It works. It works really well. The gimbal is sturdy. The quality is good. Obviously, the durability rating is like completely naff because if you get any sand or water or anything in this thing, it's just gonna, you know, break and fall apart. But yeah, it was really impressive. Honestly, it was really impressive. And it's just nice to hold and play with tech that is completely new. And I think my headline was like, it made me feel like a kid again. And they really did. Just picking it up and being like, whoa, look at this. And I had friends who aren't interested in technology be like, what the hell was that that you picked up and played with? Did you get to use any more of the AI Companion stuff in it? Well, the AI Companion, they said we could, and we could a bit, but it's very heavily Chinese. And even when you ask it to speak English, it kind of can't. It follows up in Chinese and they were like, oh, stop, stop. But I think that's the point. Like in China, this thing is already, the pre-orders have sold out. So as much as I say it's niche, it will sell out in China. People will use it. They're much more willing over there to kind of just try this crazy stuff. They all walk around with their cameras out. They all are filming content, speaking to AI assistants. So I think in that sphere, it's a success. Whether it comes over here, I'm not sure. There was kind of rumblings. They wouldn't confirm it, but they were talking as if there might be one coming over here to the UK. But we'll see. It's a crazy, but cool thing, I think. I keep thinking that, I imagine how that idea could be extended. Look, if you can put a gimbal in the back of a phone, you could put like a little robot arm that could reach out and like scratch your nose for you. More fun. So Axel, in the trailer for it, it sort of had this thing where it was like phone, iPhone, robot phone. Do you feel like that's like a justifiable comparison? Well, no, absolutely not. I mean, in the sense that it's a brand new type of phone, yeah. But I think Honor was maybe, you know, pumping itself up a bit. And maybe giving Apple a bit too much of service, you know, saying phone, iPhone, robot phone. Oh, I think the iPhone was like a revolution, I guess, to like what a smartphone is. They actually said phone, iPhone, AI phone, robot phone. Oh, that diminishes it. That diminishes it from AI phone to iPhone, we're not there yet. Really, even there. It's interesting to see some developments happening in the camera space that are a little bit more innovative. And especially right now, where it feels like cameras are coming off of our phones and onto our faces, which leads us on to our main topic for today. So we've left a lot of time to talk about everything that has been going on with smart glasses in the last few months, because it felt like 2025 was a bit of a watershed moment. Adoption was really up in 2025. And now concerns and division around things like public privacy, in terms of how we operate in spaces when we're out and about, as well as our data online, are really putting smart glasses in the fore of public discussion. There have been satirical ad campaigns here in the UK, posters going up in the US, and a lot of these topics hitting courtrooms across the world. We've got Hamish and Jason with us today, who both do a lot of coverage on smart glasses. So I wanted to get from you both a little bit of an insight into how we've gotten to where we are today and what some of the latest headlines are. So why don't you kick us off, Jason, with a little bit of a brief overview, as much of that as possible, with a very, very meaty topic. Absolutely. So cameras in glasses have been existing for quite a while now. I remember rushing to a vending machine in 2017 to go get my Snapchat spectacles and stuff like that. And that was always good fun to be able to take pictures sneakily in. For me, it was in some Egyptian tombs so that the security didn't see people taking pictures and stuff like that. I know that we've all got stories like that. As it's kind of evolved with essentially the birth of AI and the way that it's kind of like working for us, those cameras are starting to become a bit more of a safety concern in terms of just how much stuff those cameras are monitoring on a regular basis and what it's being used to train AI models as well. But then there's also the other bit. It's the age-old adage of technology. If people are given a new technology, there's going to be some people that will figure out how to use it nefariously. And we're starting to see a lot more really concerning ways of people using metaglasses, actually sort of like trying to drill out the LED lights as well and seeing it work and everything, seeing the camera continue to work when it shouldn't, the response at first from Meta seemed to be good in that we have issued this update that when the LED light is messed with in any way, shape or form, that the camera will be shut off and everything. But then the very next day, they started testing something called super sensing AI glasses, which are basically always on, capturing everything around you essentially to train its models, which I don't know what you think about that, Hamish, but it seems a little bit dystopian. Yeah, so super sense is this thing that has been leaked a few times and I think they've never called it something official, but Mark Zuckerberg has said in investor meetings and various situations that there is this general goal to have always on AI and they will always point to tools like when you're about to leave your house, their glasses could say, wait, wait, you've forgotten your keys because it would know where you leave your keys and it would have seen that you didn't go and pick them up that morning or if you're out at the shops and it could tell you, you know, you could ask have I got any milk in and your glasses would have seen in your fridge and seen you're running low or actually you've got plenty or these like basically offloading some of that mental load and sort of helping you out in that way. But obviously, while there you can find various useful cases of it, it's got to be always on to be useful. The moment it can't see bits of your day, it instantly stops being useful because, you know, if you'd have turned them off in the morning, it doesn't know if you've picked up your keys, it was off. And you think, okay, the AI is always on, always looking, always listening. That's pretty big privacy concerns. The way that apparently some form of it is meant to work in testing is instead of capturing all of the data and sending it off to meta servers, it will turn it into metadata, which is basically data about your data. So it wouldn't capture the image, it would capture a description of the image. If that's sort of, you know, splitting hairs, I don't know, that's up to you. And you also sort of have to trust that's how it works and it won't ever change. So yeah, I don't know. SuperSense is one of those things where I'm sure it is useful and I'm sure that you can say a dozen different things about how it's really handy, but I don't know if it's handy enough to overcome the fact that you always have something that's watching everything you do of all hours of the day. And I think the reason why any news that's coming out about the SuperSensing stuff feels even more pertinent is because we have not yet addressed some of the glaring concerns people have about the technology we have now in smart glasses. The problem is, is that people, when they get their hands on a thing that can do a thing that is bad, will try and do the thing that is bad, like you say, with the removal of the privacy features. You both use smart glasses quite a lot. I've used a couple of different pairs, Lance has as well. What do you feel now when you're sort of using them out in public versus what you felt when you first started trying them? Has it changed at all? I don't wear smart glasses with cameras on anymore, like through and through. The way that the conversation has changed around my mates whenever I'd be wearing them, because I always do this thing whenever I'm testing smart glasses, I call it a pub test, that I'll basically go to my mates, go for a pint and everything, and without telling them, just show up wearing smart glasses and see whether they spot them on my face and things like that. Most of the time, it's you look like a bit of a something beginning with a W, and I won't say that word any further. But for the most part, if I was wearing the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and things like that, it was always, obviously, they're kind of like a bigger frame to like house a battery and stuff like that, but it wasn't to the point that they looked overtly weird on my face. Whereas now, people are so much more conscious of the fact that there's a camera on your left and a blinking light on the right, if I can say that properly. It makes the people around me nervous and it kind of changes their reaction to me wearing glasses with cameras on them. So I've moved a lot more to smart glasses without cameras on them. So things like the Even Reality G2, the Memo Mind, which I know are over there, and so on and so forth because of the reaction that people have had to them. And you had something similar recently because you went on your honeymoon. Congratulations, by the way. Thank you. Yes. So I took these Meta Optics with me because I've been giving them to review. And so I thought, well, I'm going on my honeymoon. I know when I've gone on holiday in the past, my Meta glasses are normally a pretty useful piece of kit because they've got that camera so you can record in the moment things without being behind your phone. They also have open ear headphones so I can listen to music. And we were in Tenerife, so a lot of stuff's in Spanish. So actually my wife used a pair of the Oakley glasses that I've got and she used them to help her translate the back of conditioner bottles because hers had exploded in the suitcase and she's allergic to some ingredients so she needed to find out if she could use the conditioner she was buying. And so there are a bunch of these useful cases. But yeah, I did feel like I constantly wanted to take them off. The moment I used them was when we were out and about in a town nearby. But when I was by the pool at a hotel, I sort of felt like, oh, I can't really wear these because if someone spots me in them, I think there's enough fear around them that someone might think I'm being a creep and want to beat me up. And I think that even though I've not had anyone actually come and present in an aggressive way towards me, I just see this stuff and I think, oh, I don't know if I want to be associated with the weirdos. And also, I don't want to risk someone having an adverse reaction to them because I think as you said, Jason, it has changed dramatically. Because I remember writing stories last year, or maybe not writing stories, but telling people. It's like, it's kind of odd that when Google Glass came out, I feel like very instantly there was this visceral reaction. And maybe Lance can talk about this a bit more in a minute. But there were stories about people being accosted in the street and like, very much, I do not like this, having a camera on it. But the Metaglasses and some of these others that were around seemed to just like, be getting a pass. Like no one seemed to care. And then suddenly we hit a brick wall and everyone is like, this is awful. This is weird. And you cannot escape in 2026. I don't know what, because obviously Lance, I know you used a lot of the Google Glass and stuff like that. So I was wondering, what was your perception of that side of stuff? Google Glass, you know, the original Google Glass looked so strange that of course people immediately called you all sorts of names when you walked around with them. And I did walk around with them quite a bit and appeared here and there. And you can find Getty images of me wearing them. And yes, I'm that idiot. But with the Ray-Bans, you know, the thing that changed, what you mentioned is, the reason that they were so widely accepted is that they basically looked like regular glasses. They were the closest thing we had now to smart glasses that didn't look absolutely ridiculous on your face. And people would not notice initially. But just like everything else, the speed at which sentiment changed on these sort of almost moved at AI speed. We went from that honeymoon period where everybody was like, you know, Meta was selling a ton of them, a lot of people wearing them, all the competition to try and meet what Meta was doing with the Ray-Bans. And suddenly we're in that other space where people are going, oh, wait a minute, that's a camera on your face looking at me. You just took my picture. I mean, honestly, that Becky story, which I know we're gonna talk about, really hit me. This idea that there's a camera on your face that can be on at any time. Yes, there's a light that you can see, but not everyone notices it. So, you know, the one flip side of this that I wanted to mention though, because the sentiment about privacy, you know, that the camera's on and you talked about it, you know, if that system of always capturing everything all the time, but just metadata. And it just made me think that ultimately this is all about data. Facebook love, Meta loves data. And really we've been delivering data at scale across our lives for decades now by using the internet and using the phones and traveling around with them. We've just been feeding data into the big system. But the gap in that data has been sort of visual data where real-time visual data sort of give you a sense of the world around you. It's the one area where it's really not easy to capture the data. And that's this big opportunity I think that Meta sees. But this is where the rubber meets the road. This is where the moment of human sentiment, human reaction to this is at cross purposes with giving over this kind of data and being in that space of always on. So I don't wear, the only reason I don't wear smart glasses very often is not necessarily because I was concerned about privacy or data. It's that I don't have a pair with prescription lenses. On that second one about the prescription, yeah, these are the first ones I've had with my prescription in the optics. I've got a very slight prescription though so if I don't have any in it doesn't really make that much of a difference to my vision. It has been very fun but I guess as the backlash to smart glasses grows, obviously prescription glasses cost a lot more because you've got to get special lens fitted. And then suddenly if you're being told well there's a bunch of places you can't come in and wear these and you know you've spent £500 on a pair of glasses, well, you know, you're stuff out of luck. Yeah, a lot of them say, a lot of these rules say we still ban them if they are your prescription glasses. They are banned, no ifs, no buts, no coconuts. And so you have to like, you know, that's a big problem. And actually, but also on the data side of things, Lance reminded me, there was a patent filing I think was being reported on yesterday as we're recording, so fairly recently and included two interesting details. The first was the return of this so-called name tag feature that Meta got on a little bit of hot water for before. Basically the idea that the glasses, again with this sort of maybe always on sensing, can tag people in real life. So if you meet someone at a dinner party one time and then maybe see them in a couple of months, you can be like, oh, this is Josie. She has a cat and this is what her partner's called and all of this stuff, like basic information. So then, you know, you can then talk to this person that maybe you half know you know, but you can't remember all these details and it can spit that back out to you. Name tag, I think, was meant to be a bit more overall and general. This patent seems to again come back to this, oh, it's for like dinner parties and these private events. So you think, okay, I feel like you're just trying to service the same thing in a different package. But the second, and so people really focused on that. I think the thing that some people missed was this fact that it could like auto record clips of things that you're doing, which seems initially maybe kind of useful. You know, you can capture something on social media rather than having to edit your different clips together. But part of the patent references the glasses and the AI being able to tell what you find most interesting when you're looking at it. And I'm saying to Jason, I feel like that is not even a half step away from being some kind of advertiser useful data being like, we can tell you what, you know, aspects of different adverts. This person specifically finds the most visually engaging. And I'm not saying they've said they'll do that, but it's so close to them clearly being able to do that and selling all of that stuff. And if you're a company like Meta or any big social media companies, they make their money on advertising. You know, it would make perfect business sense for them to sell that data. Yeah, it is still horrifying. I mean, I remember watching there's a documentary in the early noughties, which was all about how supermarkets do the same thing. They used to do eye tracking to see what shelves you looked at in the supermarkets and then give preferential treatment to more premium products or more expensive products, more desirable ones in the areas that people would look the most. I remember watching that thinking that's so violating. I don't want to go to the supermarket anymore. They're going to con me. And now, obviously, we're moving to this different space. But the thing I find really interesting about the facial recognition part specifically, and this was something I found just before we came into the studio today, was that, obviously, Facebook has always had facial recognition as part of its services, but it ceased those in 2021. So it used to have the feature which would automatically tag photos of friends based on, you know, your own uploads and their uploads. And in 2021, they stopped that service and they cited specifically, there are many concerns about the place of facial recognition technology in society. And regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use. Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate. And I think what's most interesting here is about that narrative shift that's happening over the years where, like, we're getting quite used to the idea of our face, our data being in places, but also people are sort of having waves of acceptance. So Lance mentioned before our colleague Becky had written a story recently about this kind of topic, including specifically around surveillance technology in everything from smart glasses to our earbuds. So we're going to run a little tape from her own words talking about that story. Hi, I'm Becky, TechRadar's audio editor, and this was a bit off my regular beat, to be honest. But I'd had my eye on what people far more intelligent than me call the chicification of surveillance tech and privacy and consent issues around it for a little while now because of something I saw back in May that made me feel awful. I recently had shoulder surgery and not long after it, my other half drove me to our local beach so I could just sit and exist and still be in pain, but with a different view. And I saw a man wearing AI glasses, filming a family on the beach with two toddlers making sandcastles and a slightly older girl, a child in just bikini bottoms. Now, I could see he was filming with the glasses because I could see the light, but the family hadn't seen it. They were busy making sure their children had sunscreen on and that the girl was watching her chips because the UK has a seagull problem. You know, typical family madness and chaos. But the man was filming sitting with other men who must have known that he was filming and there was an ease to the lack of consent and zero comeback on it all that made me just incredibly angry. And I hate to think what he did with that footage, honestly. So the point is, I made a silent promise that I wouldn't let that get away without some kind of coverage, whether I mentioned that horrible observation or not. Then TechRadar published three stories in a few days that to me resonated around this central problem, i.e. lack of consent, growing omnipresent surveillance in wearables and collection of our data and likeness, which is often stored not safely, but rather used without our knowledge, let alone consent in various ways. This was all by chance, but a new bit of software in LG TVs was launched that basically records your conversations in standby and asks owners to tell anyone visiting their home that their voice will be recorded and used in AI training by LG to comply with wiretapping laws. Then there was the backlash over Meta's glasses and hackers facilitating facial recognition tech, which led to various online privacy groups calling for camera-free glasses and their subsequent widespread banning from certain places. And the third was my coverage of the new Nothing Ear 3A earbuds. So despite being pink, fun, $99 earbuds, built as designed to invoke a sense of play in Nothing's young, creative, engaged fan base, they record calls with a squeeze of the stems and all your caller or subject would hear is a beep, which if you mute, they wouldn't hear. And again, nothing tells you during setup to always gain permission before you record. But of course, the user can choose to ignore that request. And nobody seems to have spoken about this from a privacy and consent perspective. What I wanted to point out with each example is the company put the AI surveillance tech into the kit, but then leaves the legal responsibilities with the owner, which let's face it, the owner just may not bother with. So initially, I just wanted to get comment on all of this from an expert. And fortunately, a wonderful woman from Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit organization for digital safety called Lauren Henry Parsons was prepared to talk to me and her words were golden. When she spoke to me, she kept saying phrases such as necessary friction over consent and privacy by design and zero trust approach. There was also a really strong quote. Companies chose this. They chose to put AI in products cheaply without the necessary privacy protocols inbuilt. They could have made better choices. So that made me wonder if any CEO out there was making better choices. Are you not bypassing the whole consent thing and not scraping our data to sell us things and further LLM training? And it turns out there is. Div Garg is the founder and CEO of AGI, a company that wants to make a Siri that actually works, but where all data stays on device. He also turned down a big gig at OpenAI to do it his way. So he expanded a lot on the notion that companies do things the cheap way because storing all of your data on device is more expensive and means you have to work harder with things like onboard memory space and the heating up of your device and also battery life. We're storing it cheaply and accessibly in the cloud bypasses those hurdles. That obviously is potentially bad for us. Now, on-device data and such Gibson certainly isn't happening with those nothing tiny buds. And as we all know, it has already been widely reported that footage taken with smart glasses isn't staying on device. So in the end, I got two interesting points of view, one from a female digital rights advocate, one from a male CEO of an AI and robotics company. It wasn't necessarily my plan, but the first interview led me down a path to the second. Anyway, hopefully interesting. Thanks, guys. So the reason I wanted to include that today is because we're all evangelists in our own different way about this. And we're also of ages where we're a bit more used to some of this stuff when it comes to social media platforms. Axel, you and I were talking about that earlier. For you, though, where do you sit on this issue as someone who's not really using smart glasses much? I mean, I think for me, I'm not too concerned about those. State surveillance and data harvesting stuff, because as Lance was saying, we've kind of been giving them that information for years. You know, even from a FaceID point of view, I've been surrounded by FaceID technology and facial recognition technology my whole life. And maybe that's a generational difference or like a complicity or whatever. Like, I don't know, maybe it's not right that I'm so willing to give this all over, but that's where we are. Like, I'm used to it. But from a kind of content point of view, there's nothing worse than someone coming up to you on the street with a boom mic and a camera or a phone and saying, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? And this is like that, but without even knowing it's a camera there, you know, so I don't think you can't take, it's going to be very difficult to take people's right away to film stuff on the street, right? If people have a camera or a phone, they can do whatever they want, they can film you. But there's a big difference between it being subtle and secret and not knowing, because then you can't remove yourself from a situation. And I think maybe that's the key difference for me. Like the story that Becky's talking about, it wasn't someone sitting there with a camera or a phone, which is obviously equally bad, but you can maybe, you're more aware that it's happening and you can ask them to stop it or whatever. But if you just can't see it, how do you even, where do you stop and start with that? I don't know. Yeah. And she, you know, she mentioned in there about the privacy light is visible if you're looking for it. And there are still vast swathes of people who don't realise how many of these devices there are out on the market, for one thing, and how different they can look, how different those lights can look even. But also I can't see a tiny little LED from 20, 30 feet away. And I'm, you know, relatively young. Not everyone is going to be able to see that, especially when you then come on to people with different visibility needs. Also just being in public spaces, being outdoors, it's not always possible to see. So I think the challenge they're really going to be butting up against is how to do this in a way that is frictionless, because that's the word they often use, right? That's why we can't have a sound, because then it's too interfering with the experience of it, but also still has that in mind. My question to you is, do you think it's possible to do that or is it just no cameras are the only way to do it? It's a good question. And it's one that I feel like is going to be very tough to answer over the next few years. So to agree with what you were saying, like the whole idea of like data collection, I'm not necessarily too uncomfortable with, because at the end of the day, people can generate the whole human race on a day-by-day basis, according to some study I read a couple months back, generate 400 million terabytes of data per day. Crazy. And that is being collected, absorbed and processed. And to take the slightly cynical stance that I know that Hamish was taking about meta, it would be the most meta thing possible. To turn that into some kind of like AI training data and also for advertising as well. It kind of takes me straight back to that scene in Ready Player One when he's trying to like present like the VR headset and saying like, we can achieve 85% screen coverage of your field of view with ads before you have a seizure. It seems like it would be the most meta thing to do to see how much of your view can we hold up with adverts for whatever things you may have lingered on at like a store or something like that. And then also on top of that as well, it's trusting private companies to do the right thing with the information it takes about you. The trust point is the sticking point here really, right? Like that doesn't feel like there's anyone right now who you can look at and say, I trust with this data. But at the same time, the data is being generated. It exists. It's not just through these devices either, right? I always try and keep in mind that, you know, private businesses or public companies, you know, their businesses, your best interest is not the first order of business. It is the survival and the growth of the business and what is best for that. So sometimes when you hear the CEOs talking and acting in ways that seem disconnected from the human experience, it's because they're not thinking so much about the human experience. They're thinking about how will this company continue to grow, collect data, make money, build a bigger audience. And if a sort of side benefit of that is that somehow your life improves because you've got a new feature or functionality, well, that's all the better. I mean, I don't think that they're actively trying to harm people, but they're not always thinking about reality or how people actually interact and do things. And then you have the people on the other side who are handed these devices. And there's always going to be people who do good. And then there's always going to be people who will do bad. There was some incredible reporting from, basically it was joint reporting by two Swedish news outlets with some great journalists that basically found some Meta contractors that were given access to footage and photos recorded using the Meta glasses. Because I spoke with Meta about this. Basically, when you do sign up to use the AI on the glasses, you sign up that anything that involves the AI is shared with Meta, which includes photos and videos. Because it all goes through the Meta AI app. It all has to go through the Meta AI app. And it's not like Apple. They don't have a private server. They don't do any of that stuff. You know, it's all shared with the Meta. It could be part of the training data. And some of that training data will be reviewed by humans. However, and that is like pretty clear. A lot of this stuff is sometimes, you know, hidden away in terms of services. But I've set up a bunch of these different glasses over time. And when you've clicked allow AI, it says in pretty obvious text, if you allow this, we will see everything you do with the AI, including photos and videos shared. Cool. Makes sense. Clear. What wasn't entirely clear is that includes seemingly if you activate the camera using voice controls. So not saying, hey Meta, look and tell me about this landmark. Just saying, hey Meta, start a video. Which technically is AI. I think to a lot of people, we've had voice controls for a while. Doesn't feel like using AI. It's a hands free system. We refer to it as something different. But that then meant that these contractors said they saw various different things from people in the bathroom to people in the bedroom with other people in states of undress, looking at credit card information, all the stuff that you have nightmares about strangers seeing about you. And obviously that's really bad. Even if you know, even if you've technically agreed to that, I think that's part of this is like they can say, oh, you know, we people know this and know that. But I think part of whatever system we have going forwards, this needs to be like properly spelled out what is and isn't shared and maybe allow people to have access to some bits, but not others, you know, because hands free controls is an example of something which I don't feel like you need to share with an AI, but also to sort of maybe steel man the defense of glasses. We have seen like reports of things like how the camera can be really helpful for people who are visually impaired in some way. And it can, the glasses can describe what you are looking at to that person. There is something called a conversation boost, which actually had its own controversy where Meta tried to rate limit it. They didn't backtrack on that. But the idea is you could be sat down with someone in a cafe and the glasses can pick up sort of who you're looking at and boost their audio. So let's say we're in a noisy space. It would boost your sound and cut out the noise. And so through the speakers, I would hear your voice being played. It's not quite an accessibility feature. Meta reached out to me saying that they don't call it an accessibility feature because they don't define it as one. But I think it is kind of like we've seen like the hearing aid feature that you can get in like AirPods. It's like that maybe half step for people who aren't yet ready to get like full on accessibility tech, maybe are trying this stuff out. And you sort of asked the question of like, can you get rid of cameras in these glasses? Could you potentially do it that they can only take a photo? And so like, because that's off, you know, the AI just needs to maybe see like a snapshot of what you're seeing. Just being able to take a photo is kind of useful, but obviously isn't as weird as taking a video. And then you can, you know, like they do in Japan where they mandate cameras have to have a loud snap sound. You could do the same thing. Like you have to play a really audible I'm taking a photo sound effect. Maybe that's how you get away with it. Then again, you know, as Jason talked about earlier, we've already seen people finding ways to like drill out the drill out the light to get around the fact that Meta did originally protect it. If you just try and cover the light with a piece of tape or your finger, it won't let the cameras work. People found if they mess with the hardware, they could have found a way to get around that. Ironically, people selling that through like Facebook marketplace. They then have seemed to clamp down on a bit, but it's just this thing of people. I think if you, the moment you put a camera in them, people will find a ways to abuse it. And so I guess the hope is you find regulation that goes down the middle, right? Think about it this way. What if I walked into the office in scuba gear, like just walked in? You're like, what are you doing? Why are you wearing scuba gear? And that's kind of how I feel about, you know, full featured smart glasses with the display audio on a camera. They are going to be useful in certain situations and should be used in certain situations. The fact that these companies are trying to sell them as a potentially always sort of life-watching technology, I think is where they really go awry. You know, you don't wear the scuba gear all the time. You shouldn't wear these glasses all the time. However, if I were somebody like climbing them out, how we are free, what is called like a free base climber, I don't know how they're described, but if you're, yeah, and imagine then you're wearing them and it sort of can see where you're supposed to be grabbing, can guide you, can tell you about it, can tell you about the conditions. It can capture the moment. That seems super, super useful. But then in my everyday life, 95% of the time, I just need to see clearly. I don't need all of that other stuff. I think there's a safety argument in there as well that Becky sort of alluded to in her story in terms of like being able to capture a potential assailant in a violent situation, especially as a woman. There have been times I've been wearing smart glasses and I've thought to myself, you know, God, if something happened to me right now, I'd actually have a way to prove it happened. But also when it comes to heads up displays, same thing for navigating. London has a little bit of a phone theft problem. It would be much safer to be able to look where you're going and see directions straight down the barrel rather than looking down at your phone. Those are very limited positive use cases. And those are also both things we are doing to circumvent situations in which other bad actors are the problem. When in reality, what we're talking about is the problem with smart glasses is those same bad actors. And there are a way and we talked about earlier, there are other gadgets that do the same thing. The direction is one of my favorite things about my smart watches. I get Google Maps on here and so I can just look at my wrist rather than having my phone out. I was going to ask you both as smart glass wearers, what is the one thing you do the most on it? What do you find is the most useful? The content creation, the assistance, the music listening. What is it that if you could strip it down to one thing, you would both use them for? So for me, as I've made my shift over to like glasses without cameras on them until the camera part of it starts to make more sense, there's definitely been some pretty decent, what's kind of called like ambient computing elements to it. So I got speaking to the CEO of Even Reality is where he kind of proposed what this platform is going to be, which is it's computing only when you need it and then it disappears away. And honestly, when I think about to kind of go all the way back and ask your question about like, can glasses with cameras work? I think it will do over time as they figure out what that platform looks like, like you have to start with the design and actually make them look nice on your face. And then the societal acceptance of that technology kind of comes in over time. The killer features come in and they can get to that point. I mean, as a wonderful example. So the Rainbio X3 Pro are basically a combination of AR glasses with heads up display and also a camera. I put them on and I look like I'm totally not trying to spy on your party. No one can tell. It's a hell of a look. Regardless, I'm going to quickly take this off because I'm going to get quickly memed by the internal staff on the Slack channel. What I'm trying to say is the feature sets, while there is some useful stuff, I know that we've talked a bit about this before, there isn't anything that is really sort of like good enough to make me think, OK, so smart glasses have a real genuine point for being looking at directions on my watch or pulling out my phone and taking a picture of something. I think for me, the fact that they come to a little bit of everything is useful enough that I find that the audio when I'm wearing them is solid. You know, I kind of like just being able to casually walk around, even though I love like open ear headphones from like Shox, there's like open worn dots. I love those. It even feels like there's something in there. It's just kind of nice to have like casually be walking around with glasses. I think they look pretty stylish. Also, before I bought these glasses, these were the only glasses I had that could do like the transition lenses, which is kind of handy, but it's not really like intrinsic in the tech. Because you're talking about glasses. I'm talking about glasses mostly, but just having the audio is fun. And I think the thing that I think is genuinely useful for them is while the phone is better as a camera, being able to live in the moment while still capturing it does have some major benefits. You know, I've used them loads at concerts to record quick videos or photos just to be like, hey, look, I'm enjoying this concert, but I'm not behind my phone. It's just like being able to capture those little moments, your hands free. So you don't, that's like an advantage of them is you don't have to pull your phone out and you can activate them with your voice, even if it is shared with Meta. But you can just like record something while still living in it, which I know was like part of like the Google thing. You can sort of hold your phone. But it's like, you're still sort of holding your phone. I still feel like you're separating yourself off a little bit. This is the time when like the only time I felt like I'm recording something and living it in a way. And I think that there is there is something nice about that. But is that a good enough positive to get around all the other negatives? I'm not wearing them as much anymore and I've written about how I'm not wearing them as much anymore. So you can take from that that I think that's not counteracting the negatives. But yeah, there are positives there for people. The only benefit I've found from any of them really has been that Judi Dench can be the voice assistant on the Meta glasses. I've got to have Judi Dench, my girl. So before we close out, I think the good place to leave this is what happens next. So we talked about what we might want to see from these smart glasses, but we actually know that quite a few are coming out. You've got this mega collaboration with Samsung, Google and a million other people. I'm not going to list out all their names again, sorry. As well as the long-rumored smart specs from Apple and other companies in the mix as well. Just how badly does this current backlash bode for those brands, do we think? Samsung and Google, I think this is not great for them because I think Google has, as we've talked about, has I think a lot of that same reputational problems that Meta has had. And I think that I think they will have to navigate this quagmire as well. I've written, I know I'm sort of known on the podcast as the anti-Apple guy. He's turning. I've written plenty about how I think Apple's probably the only company that might be able to get away with full-on proper glasses with cameras and everything. Because if you ask someone, what's the thing Apple does? I feel like it's big on data privacy. Every single step of the way, particularly on the AI, like this private cloud compute stuff. And in terms of trusting the pictures and images and all of that stuff you take is completely 100% private will be a major benefit to them. The flip side is, while that's private for you, it doesn't consider necessarily the privacy of everyone around you, which I think is the bigger public concern. But I think that if they can, if they can solve, they've solved like half the problem, whereas everyone else has solved none of the privacy problem. And so if they can, the people at Apple are smart, I'm sure they can solve the other half of it. Equally, maybe Apple has, because they've not announced anything officially yet, maybe they just come out with some without cameras in. I know that there was some report they might put cameras in their earbuds, but maybe they just... Yeah, you brought that story up earlier, Axel. Yeah, yeah. So it's like leaked as part of some Mac beta or something like... Yeah, essentially, little cameras in AirPods to be able to do this kind of like... Well, I guess more like the smart sensing sort of stuff. Smart sensing, yeah. It's like the visual intelligence part of Siri. And I was saying before, like I think maybe six months ago, if that was rumored and was reported to be coming out, people would go, oh, that's really cool and innovative. Whereas now it's got a whole different taste to it now. And I think, Hamish, what you were saying about Apple is seen as the sort of, you know, captain privacy. I think that's true because they haven't jumped headfirst into this whole, you know, like situation. And I think for them to do that, I don't necessarily think they'd do it in a way that's any different to anyone else. I think they just maybe won't. I don't know. I mean, I know there has been all these rumors of glasses for a long, long time. This makes me even less convinced that this is the year or next year is the year that they would bring those out. I think maybe they'd even slow it down even more. I don't know. Who's to say? What do you see on the horizon, Jason? So what I see is a bunch of companies that have very different ideas of what smart glasses are going to be. There's, of course, the ambient computing platform that I was talking about before, where you're going to see more camera-free, privacy-focused AI glasses, which also have microphones and maybe not super privacy-focused, but that's the image that they're going to want to pull across. Then you've got your standard way of AI glasses, which Hamish has already spoken about, the Warby Parker, Gentle Monster, Qualcomm, Google, whoever else wants to be involved in that party, they're welcome to come. That place will continue to evolve as well with increasingly, I'm going to assume, concerning sounding technologies that will probably bring me back on future episodes of this podcast. And then there's the extra level. So the Snap Specs, for example, where the idea is everybody keeps talking about Mark Zuckerberg will not shut up about saying glasses are going to replace your phone. Snap Specs are the first real interpretation of that. Whether it works or not, it's up for debate. They are $2,000 glasses and they are gigantic on your face and stuff like that. I took a picture of the Snap CEO wearing them. That went super viral all over X because basically you could see how much pressure it was putting on his ear because it's the sheer force of the insane amounts of compute to make something like that work. It is that fundamental vision of what do we get if we take a VR headset, make it present of everything around you and stuff it into a pair of glasses. Everybody's got their own idea of what it's going to look like and it's going to be up to us and our ever dwindling bank balances to decide. I'll put it pretty simply. We're in the middle of a tech reckoning and it is hard to approach consumers with something that is full of AI, constantly watching, making people around you uncomfortable when everyone's questioning their choices about using all kinds of technology. Some of the companies making this stuff, the social media companies are under attack, literally under legal attack and facing massive fines. There's just questions about the pervasiveness of technology in our lives where people are looking to take a step back, not to become further immersed in it. And of course, I speak as somebody who is surrounded by and loves technology, but I can see the sentiment shifting. So it's going to be really hard for these companies to introduce these devices and inspire people to buy them in the same way that they do buy smartphones because they not only love them, they absolutely need them. It's hard to convince them that they absolutely need these smart glasses. So I think it's going to be, five years ago, it might've been different. I just think it's going to be much more difficult to build a market around these devices going forward. Well, it's going to be an interesting couple of months with MetaConnect on the horizon, as well as all these big launches. So make sure to subscribe if you want to see those future episodes where we'll undoubtedly be covering this topic some more. With that, we are out of time for this week's episode. So big thanks to our guests for joining us. Let us know in the comments down below what you make of the current furore around smart glasses. And while you're there, hit the subscribe button for more tech news, reviews, and how-tos. We'll see you next time. Bye.