Who are your friends, who you looked at and when you laughed: Meta's new and disturbing patent
Smart glasses that will identify the people around you, track your gaze direction, and analyze when you laughed: a new Meta patent reveals how the company envisions the next generation of wearable computing. However, on the way to implementation, it faces significant hurdles regarding privacy, regulation, and consent.
A new patent from Meta presents a scenario that blurs the line between a personal digital assistant and an environmental biometric surveillance system. Patent documents filed by the company in the US describe smart glasses equipped with cameras and artificial intelligence, capable of identifying faces in real-time, tracking the wearer's gaze, analyzing facial expressions, and automatically editing summary videos of social events without the need to press a record button.
According to the patent specification, the system does not settle for passive filming of the field of view as is currently done with Meta Ray-Ban glasses. The cameras capture the environment, and machine learning algorithms create a biometric signature for every person present, cross-referencing it with databases.
Tracking your friends, but for real
The system weighs social data and prioritizes filming people with personal closeness to the user, such as spouses or close friends, while filtering or blurring other attendees. Simultaneously, tracking eye movements and identifying emotional expressions like laughter allow the glasses to determine which moments are of interest and derive edited clips to be presented to the user at the end of the meeting.
The disclosure of this patent comes at a sensitive time for Meta. Just two months ago, it was revealed that the company had secretly embedded a dormant software component called NameTag in a routine update of the Meta AI app, which reached over fifty million devices. The code allowed for biometric scanning of faces and was removed within a day of its publication. In the past, Meta has been forced to delete a database of over a billion face templates and pay billions of dollars in fines following lawsuits over biometric privacy violations.
Although the company defines the patent as theoretical research, the document demonstrates the technological direction it is striving for. While Apple has taken a strict line with its wearable systems, preventing third-party apps from accessing raw video feeds, and Snap has limited its glasses to initiated and short documentation, Meta is promoting a concept of continuous capture and analysis.
Meanwhile, Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi and Baidu are accelerating the development of AI glasses for the local market under more permissive regulation. However, in Western markets, the European AI Act and biometric regulations in the US are expected to pose heavy legal obstacles to the commercial implementation of these features.
The main challenge lies not only in computational ability but in the question of social consent. When Google launched its glasses over a decade ago, the device encountered fierce public opposition due to the presence of an exposed camera. Now, with hardware disguised within standard fashionable frames sold in millions of units, the question is not only what the device can do for the wearer, but what are the rights of the people sitting in front of it who never chose to become part of its database.
