As Meta continues to boost the smart glasses market with its EssilorLuxottica artificial intelligence (AI) wearables, the tech giant is
being sued for allegedly collecting sensitive content from users, as nudity, sexual
situations and more recorded footage has been viewable by Meta employees.
A recent investigation by Swedish newspapers reports Kenyan workers employed by a Meta subcontractor seeing “someone going to the toilet, or getting
undressed” on users' smart glasses recordings. Other workers described video material depicting sexual encounters and other intimate moments that smart glasses users did not seem to know they
are recording.
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The report led to further investigation from the Information Commissioner's Office, a U.K. regulator, resulting in a lawsuit filed by Clarkson Law Firm on behalf of plaintiffs
from New Jersey and California alleging that Meta and EssilorLuxottica violated privacy laws and took part in false advertising.
The lawsuit argues that Meta understands general consumer
concern around AI privacy violations and misleadingly marketed its new line of AI smart glasses as privacy-safe via the slogan, “designed for privacy, controlled by you.”
“Videos captured through the glasses, including highly sensitive moments inside homes and other private spaces, are transmitted to Meta's servers and then routed to a subcontractor in Kenya,
where human workers manually view and label the footage to train Meta's AI models,” the lawsuit alleges.
According to a Meta spokesperson, when users share personal recorded content with
Meta AI, the company employs contractors to review the footage for future improvements.
“In some cases, Meta will review your interactions with AIs, including the content of your
conversations with or messages to AIs, and this review may be automated or manual (human),” the company's policy states, however with no reference to video recordings.
“Unless
users choose to share media they’ve captured with Meta or others, that media stays on the user's device,” a Meta spokesperson explains. “We take steps to filter this data to protect
people's privacy and to help prevent identifying information from being reviewed.”
Meta has stated that it automatically blurs users' faces on collected smart glasses footage
The
class-action complaint, brought by New Jersey resident Gina Bartone and Californian Mateo Canu, who say they purchased the glasses, draws on reports by Kenyan subcontractors.
"These workers
report seeing everything," the complaint alleges, referring to the subcontractors. "People changing clothes, using the bathroom, engaging in sexual activity, handling financial information, and
conducting other private activities inside their homes that no reasonable consumer would ever expect a stranger to watch. They also report that Meta's touted 'face anonymization' does not work."
These allegations against Meta may shine a harsh light on the company's reported plans to implement biometric facial recognition age checks across its EssilorLuxottica
smart glasses, allowing users to identify people using a new Meta AI feature called “Name Tag.”
As consumer interest among Meta smart glasses grows, with EssilorLuxottica selling
over seven million pairs in 2025, the integration of facial-recognition features may worry potential buyers, civil liberties groups, and local and federal governments, especially now.