Meta AI glasses are the most popular smart‑glasses on the market, leading to growing worries that people can be secretly recorded in schools, courts, restaurants and other public venues. The EFF warns that Meta might add facial‑recognition tech, creating deepfakes or nonconsensual intimate imagery, a risk already highlighted by the 50 million phones that ran an unreleased system.

To counter this, the community has built free apps that detect nearby glasses. The first, Nearby Glasses, uses Bluetooth LE to spot Ray‑Ban, Oakley, and Snap Spectacles, alerting users before a recording starts.

Bans at events like DEF CON 2026 have banned all smart‑glasses, but enforcement relies on people noticing the devices or using detection apps. Meta’s plans to disable the LED indicator on “super‑sensing” models would make it harder to know when the camera is live.

The EFF has released a guide to resist facial recognition, encourage responsible recording habits, pagp and blur faces before posting. Until new privacy laws give people a right to sue, the technology remains a “worse than nothing” safety feature.