// ENGADGET — INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE
Google really needs you to know it cares about smart glasses privacy
Public trust in smart glasses is very important for selling lots of smart glasses.
The world has changed in the ten years since Snap first launched its camera-equipped Spectacles. Not only has the smart glasses market grown, the number of people sharing videos online has also jumped significantly. Nowadays, thanks to the rise of platforms like TikTok and Reels, anyone can be an influencer. And the possibility of innocent passersby inadvertently being included in a viral clip is far higher than it was.
It is in this climate that Google launches its intelligent eyewear devices today. This year has already seen Meta catch heat for what people called its "pervert glasses" or "creep glasses." In addition to making people feel uncomfortable about being spied on or filmed without their consent, the controversy has also discouraged existing users of those glasses from continuing to wear them, not to mention possibly putting off potential buyers.
Google has been working on this launch for years, and it can be easy to see why it doesn't want its own camera-equipped glasses to suffer the same backlash or be painted by the same brush. Perhaps that's why it's taking pains to make its privacy policies around the intelligent eyewear platform clear today. It's published a blog post outlining the privacy protections it's bringing to the platform, and they don't just revolve around preventing tampering with the LED indicator lights. Google is taking a fairly comprehensive approach that goes beyond device-specific measures, and includes using its wide sphere of influence to prevent surreptitious videos spreading online. In fact, Juston Payne, the lead for XR at Google, told Engadget that there are quite a few ways privacy protection has been considered.
Let's start with what's happening on the glasses. It's basically table stakes at this point, but they all have an LED light on them to indicate when someone is taking a picture or recording a video. The light, which sits on the left side of the frame while the camera is next to the right eye, has sensors to detect if it's covered or tampered with and will prevent the capture of pictures or video.
"Unfortunately, some of the glasses that have launched in the past launched without any kind of detection for those things, and that broke trust." Payne said. "And that's a problem," he added. He also said Google's methods are "pretty effective," though that's something that we'll have to test for ourselves to verify.
And just as there are bad actors who will continue to try to break security protections for any safe in the world or online, there will be people attempting to get around Google's anti-tampering measures here. Payne said "there will always be ways around what we build, and then we'll try to fix those holes," and that he expects there will be an ongoing back-and-forth. "But nonetheless, we're very happy with where we're starting on this one."
One of the main functions of Google's smart glasses is the ability for Gemini AI to use the camera to see what the wearer is looking at and provide more relevant information. During this process, the company says that the camera visuals won't be stored in your Gemini history. When there are faces in view, Google says "your glasses are also designed to automatically redact bystanders' faces before Gemini processes the visuals."
The camera stream also won't be used in AI training or ad targeting, and Google says any data that is sent off the glasses for processing, say in the cloud or on your phone, is encrypted for transit. It's also promising to bring the Private AI Compute processing platform to glasses, enabling these new devices to use the "hardware-secured sealed cloud environment" for greater processing.
While the camera may be the most obvious recording sensor on these devices, they also have four microphones onboard to allow you to speak to Gemini or get translations for people around you. Google uses beamforming to help focus on the ind