In a widely debated move, Meta has modified its privacy policies for the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, granting its artificial intelligence expanded powers to collect and analyze data.
Effective April 29th, these new changes allow the system to analyze captured photos and videos unless the user disables the "Hey Meta" feature.
The company clarifies that using this voice feature automatically allows the camera to contribute to training its AI systems, effectively making the glasses an active tool for visual data collection.
Although the glasses don't continuously record their surroundings, recording voice commands has now become mandatory for users, as Meta has removed the option that previously allowed disabling the storage of these recordings.
Instead, audio clips are stored for up to a full year for the purpose of developing Meta's products. Users can only delete these recordings manually through the settings. Furthermore, if the company detects that a recording was triggered accidentally, it is kept for a shorter period, not exceeding 90 days.
This shift mirrors Amazon's recent policy change, which eliminated the option for local processing of voice data on Echo devices in favor of complete cloud storage.
Such a general trend among tech giants reveals a heated race to amass vast amounts of audio and visual data to feed AI algorithms. The collected data allows for a deeper understanding of dialects and pronunciation variations, thereby improving the accuracy of smart responses and enhancing the capabilities of generative models.
Despite the potential technical advantages stemming from these policies, they place user privacy squarely at risk.
For instance, capturing a photo of a family member using the glasses could mean their face is included in AI training data without their knowledge or consent.
Moreover, this expansion in data collection isn't limited to new devices; reports confirm that Meta is already using user posts from Facebook and Instagram in the US to train its Llama model.
In this context, Meta launched a standalone Meta AI assistant app for phones, in a direct attempt to compete with ChatGPT, Gemini, and other platforms. (*Note: Remember to update the link if you have a specific English version page*)
It also unveiled a live translation feature for the smart glasses.
The company is also preparing to release a luxury version of the Ray-Ban Meta later this year, with a price potentially reaching around $1,000, compared to the current starting price of $299.
