Here’s How Google Says It’s Making Its Smart Glasses More Private

Save Story Save this story Save Story Save this story Smart glasses have a public perception problem. People wearing Meta's popular Ray-Ban glasses have been labeled “ Meta Creeps .” But it didn't start with Meta—when Google Glass launched in 2013, “ Glasshole ” was the word used to describe people wearing them. It boils down to the fact that these smart glasses have cameras on them that let people record whatever’s in front of them with the push of a button. The cameras aren't easy to see, and while an indicator light activates when the glasses are recording, they're far less conspicuous than someone holding a smartphone up to record video or photos. It also doesn't help that people have tried to tamper with the LEDs and block them, and have recorded women without their consent. But Google is on a mission to change the perception of smart glasses as socially intrusive tech. The first Android XR Intelligent Eyewear smart glasses—made in collaboration with Samsung, Warby Parker, and Gentle Monster—are now available for preorder, with sales kicking off on December 10. You can read about how they work and what they can do in this separate story . But you might be more interested in how Google is trying to separate its glasses from Meta's optics and positioning them as the more privacy-minded option to assuage public concerns. “There's this whole feature set of AI privacy that we think is super important,” says Juston Payne, Google's senior director of product management for XR. “Ultimately, what we're trying to do here is say: Look, these are choices. These are, honestly, not hard technical problems. They're decisions. And we would like other companies to make different decisions, sort of like a bar-raising thing.” Photograph: Julian Chokkattu All of the Intelligent Eyewear glasses have a power switch to turn them off completely, so you can wear them as regular glasses. They also have a recording light that illuminates when the glasses snap a photo or record a video, which is intentionally limited to 90 seconds for privacy purposes. Here's a collection of the things Google says it's doing to make its smart glasses more private: Camera visuals: When you ask Gemini to look at something in front of you, Google does not save that visual data in your Gemini History. For example, if you ask Gemini to translate a menu or add concert details from a poster to your calendar, the visual data won't be saved in Gemini, and Google promises not to use it for AI training or ad targeting. This data is also encrypted on the devices, and Google says if it needs to go to the cloud or your phone for processing, it's encrypted in transit. It has plans to bring its Private AI Compute technology (similar to Apple's Private Cloud Compute ) to process this data in a secure space. App access: Third-party apps can access the camera on the smart glasses, but they must ask for permission first, and you can revoke access at any time. The Google Play Store will prohibit apps from using the camera for real-time face recognition, social livestreaming, or changing the recording light's behavior. Tamper protection: The camera can detect in real time if a user is covering the indicator light while taking a photo or recording a video, or if the LED has been tampered with. If so, it will prevent photos or videos from being taken. Payne says Google's algorithms always check if the LED is functioning properly, and while “it's not perfect,” the company is really happy with its performance so far. Redacting faces and denoising voices: If you ask Gemini a question about something in front of you and it needs to use the camera to observe, the image-processing pipeline will redact faces in the background before Gemini processes the visuals—which Google says protects bystanders. “That is designed to get around any kind of face recognition,” Payne says. Similarly, if you're talking to Gemini but someone is having a conversation nearby, Google says the glasses use directional microphones and, by default, only pick up your voice, with a “denoiser step" in the pipeline so that those conversations aren't sent to Gemini. Responsible use: When users set up their glasses, they must agree not to record others without permission, not to record in sensitive places, and not to cover the recording indicator light. Failure to comply with these requirements violates Google's terms of service, and “a user's ability to use the glasses may be disabled.” You also need an 18+ Google account to set up the glasses. Google Shopping, Google Ads, and YouTube: Google is enacting policies that ban the sale and advertising of stickers or accessories designed to hide recording lights. On YouTube, there are content restrictions prohibiting videos of harassment and unwanted sexualization, though these apply to videos recorded on glasses, cameras, or smartphones. (This is already happening on YouTube, but Payne says Google is ensuring the YouTube team is really aware and ready to enforce the policy as it launches its smart glasses platform.) Payne hopes these policies and actions will encourage other companies to follow suit. “We hope that never again do glasses launch from some other company that doesn't have good algorithms built in,” he says. “That should not have happened; hopefully it doesn't happen again.” Privacy experts I spoke with acknowledged that Google is trying not to repeat Meta's mistakes, but they point out that smart glasses are still vehicles for collecting sensitive data. Even with an indicator light, it's harder to tell when someone's recording you in public than if someone is holding out their smartphone. Reem Suleiman, senior campaign director at the nonprofit digital rights advocacy group Fight for the Future, says camera-equipped glasses shouldn't be normalized in public because they are a precursor to mass surveillance and have the capacity to identify people. (This summer, Meta silently added a face-recognition code to its smart glasses and then subsequently deleted it after a WIRED report; in 2024, two Harvard students built a face-recognition tool for Meta's glasses.) “People find ways around it,” Suleiman says. “There's no actual aspect of consent.” Janusz Swierczynski, who researches human interactions with emerging tech at the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School, tells WIRED these privacy measures are meaningful. However, they still largely address privacy at an individual level rather than thinking about people affected by them. That's partly because the technology is advancing faster than policy and research. “A lot of privacy is managed by social norms, by what we think is acceptable to record, and that prevents people from recording anything and everything,” Swierczynski says. “Normalizing recording does have unintended consequences, which is why it's important to focus on bystander privacy.” Intriguingly, Payne highlighted that tech companies like Google need to make clear, declarative statements about what the glasses are doing. “Ambiguity is not your friend here,” Payne says. “I think that a lot of that concern came from some trust being broken. So there is a rebuilding thing happening right now … You can hopefully have your cake and eat it too, which is cool glasses that everybody's excited about—that you're comfortable with.”