Apple Delays Its Smart Glasses to Sort Out Privacy

Apple is gearing up to release its first smart glasses, but at the same time it is searching for an answer to a question that may prove no less important than the technology itself: how to keep the device from becoming a constant privacy threat. So writes Mark Gurman of Bloomberg, citing sources inside the company.

A shift in the timeline

According to Gurman, Apple has moved its target launch from early 2027. The glasses are now slated to be unveiled at the WWDC developer conference in June 2027, and they will go on sale closer to the end of that same year. The company needs the extra time not only to refine the device itself, but also to build up its messaging around privacy.

A lesson learned from others' mistakes

The reason for the caution, it seems, was Meta's experience. Its smart glasses managed to earn the unflattering nickname of “creeper glasses” — because of cases of people being filmed covertly without their consent. A story like that would be especially painful for Apple: the company has spent years building its marketing around caring for user privacy, and a blow to its reputation here would sting more than it would for its competitors.

What Apple is promising

To set itself apart from Meta, the company intends to bet on privacy-friendly features. Among them are processing data directly on the device and forgoing facial recognition. By available accounts, Apple is unlikely to use users' recordings to train its AI models and, unlike Meta, does not plan to bring in contractors to review user video.

For now this is all plans and leaks, not official announcements. But the very fact that the privacy question is being discussed at the development stage, rather than after the fact, shows that the smart-glasses industry is gradually coming to realize that a camera on a passerby's face is a problem that is not only technical, but also social.

Source: TechCrunch