Turning Meta’s smart glasses into a privacy nightmare took no time at all

Meta's smart glasses become a doxing tool after students add facial recognition.

Turning Meta’s smart glasses into a privacy nightmare took no time at all
Woman wearing the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses
Credit: Meta
  • Two college students have put facial recognition technology into the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.
  • The demo the students created can pull up personal information such as names, phone numbers, addresses, and family members.
  • The demo shows off the scarier side of smart glasses.

The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are impressive tech that allows a user to livestream and use Meta’s AI. However, it’s not necessarily the tech that’s its best feature; rather, it’s the fact that the smart glasses actually look like a normal pair of sunglasses. As a result, it looks like a product you’d see anyone wear as they go about their day. With this technology becoming so discreet, it creates a certain problem that two college students have recently highlighted in a new demo.

A pair of Harvard students, AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio, have teamed up to create what they call I-XRAY. Designed to raise awareness of the scary potential of smart glasses, I-XRAY is capable of recognizing faces and connecting them to data points such as names, phone numbers, home addresses, and family members.