US Senators Press Meta Over Its 'Pervert Glasses'

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden and Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey sent Meta a letter on Wednesday. They demand that the company address the privacy concerns its smart glasses raise. "Meta's smart glasses have increasingly been implicated in disturbing invasions of users' and bystanders' privacy," the letter states.

The senators cite a 404 Media investigation published in October 2025. The outlet found Instagram accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers and millions of views. Those accounts posted videos filmed on Meta's Ray-Ban glasses in which men walked into massage parlors across the country and solicited the workers for sex.

Training AI on intimate footage

The letter pays particular attention to what happens to the recorded material. According to the senators, Meta's own disclosures confirm that imagery processed by the glasses' visual AI features may be retained and used to train AI systems, including with help from human reviewers. They call this an invasion of privacy, since most bystanders caught on camera never consented.

"Human review to fulfill a service knowingly requested by the person depicted is one thing; exposing unsuspecting individuals' intimate moments to strangers for AI training is quite another," Wyden and Markey write. In their view, such disclosure is a privacy violation even if the footage is never published or misused.

Background

Complaints about the glasses have piled up. In August, research showed how Meta's platforms foster an ecosystem of abusive content from pickup artists and influencers. They film people in public or at work, often without the subjects knowing they are being recorded. In January, the BBC reported on a woman whose phone number was posted alongside a video: she was bombarded with calls, and men who had seen the clip stalked her at work.

Earlier this year, more than 70 people sued Meta. They claim their intimate images and videos were seen by workers hired to label data. In March, Swedish journalists reported that data labelers in Kenya were viewing and annotating uncensored footage from the glasses, including sexual and violent content. Less than two months later, Meta ended its contract with those workers. Users have also been modding the glasses for years to disable the recording indicator light.

Questions for Meta

The senators want to know what safeguards, if any, prevent the nonconsensual capture, disclosure, or processing of intimate imagery. They also ask whether Meta assessed the risk of its glasses enabling voyeurism. In addition, they want to know what imagery is used for AI training and whether people can have their biometric and other data deleted.

Meta has promoted the glasses with celebrity-studded ads featuring everyone from Chris Pratt and Chris Hemsworth to Kylie Jenner. Guerrilla counter-campaigns have sprung up in response, and the devices have earned the nickname "pervert glasses." In August, Meta filed a patent application for facial recognition and highlight reel features for its glasses.

Source: 404 Media