Meta’s AI-powered smart glasses could be sending sensitive footage to human reviewers in Nairobi, Kenya, according to an investigation by Swedish outlets. Svenska Dagbladet And goteborg-posten. Report, which was published last weekclaims that Meta contractors in Kenya have viewed videos captured by smart glasses that show “bathroom visits, sex and other intimate moments”.
So far, at least one Proposed class action lawsuit Meta faces backlash after being accused of false advertising and violating privacy laws Svenska DagbladetThe report cites the company’s claim that its smart glasses are designed for privacy:
By affirmatively claiming that the glasses were designed to protect privacy, Meta owed a duty to disclose material facts that would inform a reasonable consumer’s decision to purchase the product. Instead, the meta hides a worrying reality: the use of AI features results in a stranger across the world seeing the most private moments of a person’s life.
Interviewed by Nairobi based contractors Svenska Dagbladet There are AI annotators, meaning they label images, text or audio, with the goal of helping AI systems understand the data they are training on. “We see everything – from living rooms to naked bodies,” says one activist. Svenska Dagbladet. “Meta has that type of material in its database.”
A former Meta employee reportedly tells Svenska Dagbladet Faces in the annotation data are automatically blurred, although workers in Kenya say this “does not always work as intended,” and some faces are still visible. Another person reportedly told the outlet that the wearer’s bank cards are sometimes also seen in the footage they reviewed.
Meta’s Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses come with a built-in AI assistant that is able to answer questions about what the user can see. Glasses have grown in popularity in recent years, despite growing concerns over privacy and surveillance.
Essilor Luxottica, the eyewear giant with which Meta works to develop camera-equipped glasses, plans to sell more than 7 million AI-powered glasses in 2025 — more than triple its sales in 2023 and 2024 combined. Last year, Meta made some changes to its privacy policy that kept Meta AI enabled with the use of the camera on your glasses “until you turn off ‘Hey Meta’.” It also stopped allowing wearers to avoid storing their voice recordings in the cloud.
As reported Svenska DagbladetKenya-based AI reviewers also work with transcription, ensuring that Meta AI provides accurate answers to the questions asked by users. in a statement to The VergeMeta spokesperson Tracy Clayton says media captured by its smart glasses “remains on the user’s device” unless they choose to share it with other people or Meta.
“When people share content with Meta AI, we sometimes use contractors to review this data for the purpose of improving people’s experience, as do many other companies,” says Clayton. “We take steps to filter this data to help protect people’s privacy and prevent identifying information from being reviewed.”
