Imagine for a moment that you’re walking down the street, exercising at the gym, or riding on public transport when a bespectacled stranger stops you for a chat. Everything seems fine if a bit weird, until you realize that their glasses are fitted with a small, barely noticeable camera.
Whether for content or blackmail, they are filming you with their smart glasses, loaded with the latest artificial intelligence software, without your consent. How would you react? If you were a New York subway rider, you might break the creep’s glasses and get lauded as a folk hero both in the real world and online for pushing back against privacy-ignoring, content-creating ‘glassholes.’
Privacy is at a premium these days, and it is being eroded every single day. Now, going about your day in public is no longer as safe as it was, all thanks to the spread of the most cutting-edge smart glasses, loaded to the gills with controversial augmented reality and AI facial recognition features.
Some users are playing with the gray area surrounding privacy for the sake of content. Others are using the glasses for blackmail. And tech companies, after getting caught quietly adding potentially immoral and unethical features, are furious that the spotlight is on them. But the fight for privacy isn’t lost just yet.
