Meta’s AI Glasses Will Now Disable the Camera If You Tamper With the Light. Here’s Why.

Meta has published a new FAQ tackling the privacy questions that keep coming up around its AI glasses, laying out the features it’s built to make both wearers and the people around them more comfortable.

To signal when someone is recording, every pair has a white light on the front that Meta calls a capture LED. It blinks briefly for a photo and keeps blinking the whole time you’re shooting video, and there’s no off switch. Meta points out that while phones and action cameras don’t have anything like this, its glasses have included the light since day one. The company says it went with white after testing many options, landing on it for the best mix of visibility and experience, and it tuned the brightness so the light shows up even in daylight.

Now, the problem here is that people have been able to hack Meta AI glasses so the white LED doesn’t turn on when recording. This results in so many videos being recorded and posted online that you see today, on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and more. People recording in restaurants, trying their pick up lines, you name it. The problem is people have no idea they are being recorded as the LEDs are usually disabled.

Meta also addressed why it didn’t just add a loud sound. There is a shutter sound the wearer can hear, but the company says it isn’t practical to make that audible from a distance, and a light is already familiar from things like laptop cameras and older video recorders.

So what’s Meta doing now? Starting with its second generation of glasses, Meta says the camera automatically shuts off if it detects the capture LED has been blocked, and nothing can be captured until the light is clear again. Since adding that safeguard, the company says some people have gone beyond simple tape to more sophisticated attempts to modify or destroy the LED. In response, Meta is now updating the glasses to disable the camera if they detect the LED has been physically tampered with or destroyed, something it says no other camera has done.

Beyond the hardware, Meta says it removes ads, posts, and Marketplace listings that advertise LED tampering services, and it will take action up to banning accounts. The company also says it pursues legal action against people or businesses selling tampering services, both on and off its own platforms.