Meta is making a few notable adjustments to the privacy policy for its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. In an email sent out on April 29th to owners of the glasses, the company outlined two key changes. First, it\u2019s giving Meta AI a more frequent view of the world. \u201cMeta AI with camera use is always enabled on your glasses unless you turn off \u2018Hey Meta,\u201d the email said, referring to the hands-free voice command functionality.<\/p>\n
So unless you turn that convenience-minded feature off, Meta will regularly be analyzing whatever photos and videos are captured by the built-in camera. If you simply want to use the Ray-Ban Metas as a \u201cnormal\u201d camera without any artificial intelligence involved, you\u2019ll have to disable \u201cHey Meta\u201d and stick to the physical controls. The glasses are never constantly recording your surroundings, however.<\/p>\n
Second, Meta is taking after Amazon<\/a> by no longer allowing Ray-Ban Meta owners to opt out of having their voice recordings stored in the cloud. \u201cThe option to disable voice recordings storage is no longer available, but you can delete recordings anytime in settings,\u201d the company wrote. In its voice privacy notice<\/a>, Meta states that \u201cvoice transcripts and stored audio recordings are otherwise stored for up to one year to help improve Meta\u2019s products.\u201d If the company detects that a voice interaction was accidental, those recordings are deleted after a shorter 90-day window.<\/p>\n The motivation behind these changes is clear: Meta wants to continue providing its AI models with heaps of data on which to train and improve subsequent results. Some users began noticing these policy changes in March<\/a>, but at least in the United States, Meta says they went into effect as of April 29th.<\/p>\n