// THE VERGE — INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE
Meta glasses are a workplace menace
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Public-facing workers are being filmed, harassed, and creeped out by AI-powered smart glasses.
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In August, Toru Hinkle was stocking shelves at their job at Target when they noticed two customers and asked if they needed any help. The men requested a price check on an item — but even after Hinkle told them the item was $20, the customers asked for the price again and again.
“After a while, I realized that I’m basically being pranked, and I noticed the glasses,” Hinkle says, referring to the frames with a blinking light. They were the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, and the customers were filming. Hinkle eventually called a store manager over, but the pranksters antagonized her, too — asking the price repeatedly, deliberately misgendering Hinkle as “ma’am” and the female manager as “sir.” At one point, Hinkle attempted to stop the recording by saying “Meta, stop recording” out loud, hoping to trigger a voice control setting. The customers pretended to be confused by the accusation that they were recording Hinkle.
The confrontation made Hinkle queasy. “I felt like this pit in my stomach just started to build up,” Hinkle recalls. “After this whole exchange happened, the rest of the shift, I was just quiet and didn’t even talk to anyone because I was just so shaken up by it.” Another customer called the police, Hinkle says, and the two men were escorted out of the store. Target declined to comment.
The entire exchange was turned into content for social media