Smart glasses introduce facial recognition

0:00We might actually be at the point where we should just say goodbye to what little bit of privacy that we have left because Meta has officially introduced facial recognition to their upcoming smart glasses. You know that same technology that you're able to just unlock your phone with. That same technology that law enforcement used to catch the bad guys. Yeah. Well, that technology is now going to be in the hands or on the faces of your average everyday person. An average person, whether they know you or not, is going to be able to walk right by you, recognize your face with their smart glasses, and pull up a whole bunch of information about you. And these are the type of technologies that that get people nervous. It gets people anxious that they're going to be controlled more than they have ever been. That what little bit of privacy that we have is just going to be completely eliminated. And honestly, I think I think that nervousness is justifiable.

1:02I'm nervous. I'm scared as hell. I get it. We We don't really have privacy like that. Not Not like they used to 100 years ago. But with little bit of privacy that we do have, I guess I'm protective over it. And I got this clip from ABC News that goes into this a little bit more. Meta is planning to add facial recognition to its lineup of smart glasses at some point this year. According to a report by the New York Times, the feature would let wearers of Meta's smart glasses identify people and get information about them via Meta's artificial intelligence assistant. The tech giant previously considered adding the feature to the first version of its Ray-B band smart glasses back in 2021, but scrapped the plans over technical challenges and ethical concerns. That's the big one here. ABC News tech reporter Mike Dubuski is here with more. Mike, you've got a pair of those glasses. What's going on here? And why hasn't Meta really acted sooner on something like this?

1:59Yeah, Andrew, it's really bright in this studio, so I figured I'd just pop them on. But yeah, these are the first generation of Meta's smart glasses. They've had another generation since then, and they're smart in a couple different ways, right? They've partnered with Elsalor Luxodica which makes Ray-B bands. So they look pretty much just like your average Ray-B bands, but they have small cameras here next to the lenses. And in the arms of these glasses, there's also small speakers that are kind of directed at your ears. So you can listen to music, you can listen to podcasts, and you can interact with Meta's artificial intelligence. That's how Meta is thinking about integrating facial recognition into these glasses where you can be talking to someone and maybe it'll just pop in your ear and say, "Hey, this is Andrew Dimbert. He's an anchor on ABC News Live." Pretty helpful if you like me are tend to forget people's names. But it does raise a lot of these privacy concerns. Why hasn't Meta done this until now? Well, Meta did have facial recognition integrated into Facebook and Instagram starting in 2011.

2:56It would automatically tag people in photos that you uploaded. They got rid of that in part over some of the privacy and ethical concerns that that brought with it in 2021. But now that they have this new platform in smart glasses, they're thinking about bringing it back according to the New York Times.

3:14Any push back here on some of those private privacy concerns? It's one thing to be on your phone or your computer logging onto Facebook, but it's another to have these glasses on and maybe somebody doesn't even know that you have them on,

3:24Right? And that's the big concern that a lot of people have here, right? On the one hand, certain governments can use facial recognition technology to identify, you know, people who uh they might want to target for one reason or another, businesses, including here in New York City, Madison Square Garden, has integrated facial recognition technology into their security cameras. But when we're talking about glasses, do we really have the social language as just people interacting in the world to understand that I'm recording you or this camera is on? Now, these glasses do have small lights that turn on when you are rolling, when you're taking a picture. Um, but does that immediately telegraph to the person who's on the other end that that's a camera, right? We know what pulling your phone out and, you know, recording a video looks like. Do we necessarily know that like tiny light on a pair of Ray-B band glasses means you're recording? And these are just some of the questions that people have, right? even beyond the sort of business and government, you know, pieces of this. What if, you know, there's just a creepy guy at a bar who wants to know more about a a girl there, right?

4:23Do you have the right to that privacy? These these are the questions that this technology raises. All right, Mike Debusky, thank you so much for that.

4:31These are the these are the type of questions that that are being raised. I'm sorry, that had to have been a a damn joke, right? That wasn't a question, right? The fact that we have a right to privacy. this isn't some type of question, right? The fact that he said that it was a question is already alarming. And they said that when it was supposed to originally come out in 2021, it didn't come out because of technological and ethical concerns. So basically, it was technological concerns because the same ethical concerns are still here. Now, what happened to those concerns? If that was really something to stop production back in 2021, why why wouldn't it stop production now? Why wouldn't you have those same ethics and morals now? So to even put that out there, I guess I think that's kind of like I don't know.

5:26I think I think it's kind of like a red herring because you obviously don't have these type of ethics that you're claiming. You just want to appear as the type of company that is thinking about this. Well, don't worry. We're thinking about the the creep at the bar that might be identifying his next victim using our technology. Okay, I'm I'm glad you're thinking about it. And yet yet you're going to you're still going to roll it out, right? You're still going to uh put this out with a price tag attached to it. And I think the I think the technology that wasn't there five years ago that's here now is artificial intelligence. It's gotten to the point now where we we would be more susceptible to integrating this into what we already have going on. Because it's not just the fact that you can record.

6:23They've been at glasses that can record. That's not anything new. So it's not just you being able to record somebody. It's you being able to recognize their face and pull up information about them. Well, before that, that could have been creepy. On Facebook, they had to take it away because people were talking about the privacy. Whatever. We thought you would like it. And I think it's I think it's one of those things now where we're adding this because we're assuming that you'll like this. You're going we're going to assume that you're you're kind of like me. You might forget who this person was. It's going to be very helpful if you can see that this is so and so, this is Bob that works over at uh whatever the you feel me? Like, it's going to be so convenient that people are like, "Eh, okay. All right, that's fine." Like, being able to go and search on uh Google or anywhere.

7:20It's so convenient that we choose to do that knowing that our privacy is is basically gone when we do that. We have our cell phones that we we have grown such an attachment to that we just kind of shrug our shoulders. Man, it's probably listening to me. It's it's like a little spy that we we carry around knowingly. We know that it's sitting here spying on us, not for us. It's spying against us. And if you think that the data that you collect is only for the corporations and it never gets in the hands of anybody else, then I think you're sadly mistaken. You know, just just a little bit naive to to think that that's actually how things work. And a lot of people, they they say, you know what, it it really doesn't matter cuz you're damn right, it makes my life more convenient.

8:16I forget names. I suck at names. This pulls it up. I'm going on a a date with somebody. Well, now I can just pull up a whole bunch of information about them. I don't have to worry about being catfished or whatever. I can recognize their face. Don't you don't you realize the more technology that gets in the hands of the average everyday people? Well, that's the more power that we have as a a collective, as a society. Don't you want that? Don't you want us to continue to prosper? And yeah, there's always going to be a creep at the bar. There's always going to be bad actors no matter where you go. What do you want us to do? I think uh I think anybody, and this is just me trying to steal man their side and, you know, kind of step in their shoes for a second. anybody that is against having, you know, constant surveillance and people recording not only what you're you're doing, but what you're saying and and all of that.

9:19You know, we know exactly who you hang out with and continue to go down the list. Anybody that's worried about any of that, well, they're obviously doing something wrong. They're obviously up to no good cuz I don't care. I'm not doing anything wrong anyway. So, go ahead, record me. recognize my face. In fact, I might feel a little bit seen. I might feel a little bit validated as a person. The fact that people even know anything about me. Oh well. Why do you think people constantly put pictures of their breakfast and put it out to the strangers of the internet? Give me some sort of validation. Give me something, some sort of feedback. I need that the little bit of dopamine rush that I get from people being like, "Oh, cool. I like that. Oh, cool. I know more about this person."

10:16I get it. It's a lonely world, but there's got to be ways. There's got to be ways to get that same itch scratched without losing our privacy, right? And maybe not. Maybe this is an uphill battle that I'm just spitting in the wind. There's no there's no point in actually doing this. Giza is filmed live in front of a non-existent audience. And now we'll take a quick break for the sponsor of this episode. The average cloud weighs over a million pounds. And that's why this episode was brought to you by You're Not Sorry by XO Xuded. Now streaming everywhere you listen to music. Don't even apologize. Apologize. I've seen this too many times. Too many times before. You say you want us and you love me.

11:11You was just mad. You said words you didn't mean. Don't even apologize. Apologize. I've seen this too many times. Too many times before. Back when we met. Life was so simple. Now in the end, we got too many issues. I'm done saying I'm done. You're not sorry. You said last time was the last time you lied. Yeah, you lied again. Of course, you cross the line again. How could I be so naive? You play me like a violin. Now I'm feeling stupid and just dumb enough to try again. You got me addicted. Guess I'll OD one more time again. One more time again. You say you want us. You say you love me. You say that you was mad and you said words you didn't mean. Don't even apologize. Apologize.

12:14There's no slowing this down. It's going to happen regardless. So maybe I'm just wasting my time. But I think thinking that just because you are not some nefarious bad actor, you know, bad guy out there that is doing crimes and just because you're not one of those people, doesn't mean that you aren't entitled to your privacy. It doesn't mean that somebody should be able to just look up things about you. And yeah, it might feel good or whatever validation and all that, but let's let's just pretend we we know that there are bad people out there that use technology to do bad things. This is why you have granny's getting those damn emails from Nigerian princes and they they just need a few thousand dollars. please real quick.

13:10I'll get it back. It'll come right back to you. I don't know how to do a Nigerian accent. And we've known this for a while. We've known that bad people do bad things and they will continue to progress the type of things that they can do with the new innovations that they're provided. Okay. You only give me knives. Well, I'm going to go out and do with a knife. I might stab somebody. You give me a gun, well, I'm going to go out and now I can shoot somebody. You give me computers, well, now I can hack into and do viruses. You got all of these different ways that people can, I don't know, just do bad things. Like, literally, think about the type of person that is just putting out random viruses. This used to be like a really big problem. You know what I'm saying? Like people had to get a whole bunch of uh protection on their computers just because it was just a new domain and people were able to just plant viruses, mess up people's I I don't know for what reason, but think about that person that just I I just want to do some bad I don't know who's going to click on this this little popup, but somebody is somebody's going to click on it and I'm going to give them a bad day and that makes me feel good about myself.

14:28Whatever. whatever reasoning that they have. There are these people out there. So, let's let's go ahead and skip forward. This metag glass glass glasses thing uh with facial recognition is it's everywhere. Everybody's got it. If you're not using it, you're behind. So, everybody has it. And one of these bad guys or gal, you know, not trying to be sexist, a bad person, they see you and they don't see you as whoever you know you are. They see you as a mark and not mark like the name, but mark like I'm about to get this for everything they have. About to learn where they live, learn where they work, learn what their schedule is, learn whatever is able to be provided. People people already steal people's identities. How does it work when we're blatantly showing them to everybody?

15:27You know, I think I think that yeah, the more technology that we have in our hands, the more powerful that we are. But we can't we can't just ignore that people that do bad things, they become more powerful, too. And I'm not trying to be all pessimistic and say, "Well, we shouldn't, you know, we should just stay exactly where we are and never continue to progress because there's bad people out there." Like I said, you can you can take away all guns and bad people going to find a knife. Take away all knives and they going to get a hammer. You feel me? Like it's you can't you can't just take the bad out of people. And that can't be the reason why we slow down, right? But damn, man. this facial recognition. This one got me. And then the guy said, "Well, it's it's got a little light, so you know when you're being recorded, but this isn't really a part of culture yet, so somebody might not even realize that they're being recorded."

16:26I'm going to kind of push back on that just because we already have phones and people can do some slick where they're off in the corner somewhere and they're recording. So to think that the only people that are recording other people are the ones that are just sitting there right there with the camera. I mean, yeah, maybe if that's like the group you're with and we're taking a picture or something, but if somebody is they're just trying to sneak a picture or sneak a video, what are they doing? It's like you've seen these videos that go viral where people do some unhinged or they say some racist and somebody's off in the corner and they've been recording them the whole time. They didn't know. And yeah, you got some where they use it as a weapon and they pull out their camera like now I'm recording you. But think about how many are off on the side where they just never knew they were being recorded or it's like the little security camera up in the corner.

17:22Those are the ones that that are going to catch people slipping. So, you can have your light on all you want. Um, I guess my thought is what would stop somebody from putting like tape over it or something like that. But again, if you want to do bad you're going to be able to do bad However, you know, you don't need to have this facial recognition to learn stuff about them. If you want to be a bad person, you could be uh like Joe from that show You on Netflix and you could just stalk them and follow them and find all the type of that you need to to know and do it the old school way. There's there's no stopping bad people from doing bad things. But damn does this make it easy. Damn does this make people so vulnerable. Because if you want to push back, well, now you're the one that doesn't know as much.

18:19So, let's say let's say we take it back to that creep in the bar. That's the example that that bro was given. So, you got a creep in a bar and he likes a girl. Girl doesn't like the guy and he comes up. Can I get you a drink? Acts all some type of way. Whatever the I don't know. I'm trying to trying to paint the picture. You know what I'm saying? But he comes up and he's able to see everything about her. He sees her name. He sees where she works. Sees her different social media profiles. All types of Before he even really came up to her, he caught a quick little glimpse of her and was able to pull all this up before. So before he even asked to buy her a drink, he has all this information. And let's imagine this girl, she she said, "You know what? I don't want these smart glasses. you know, I I just want to come out and I I just I don't I don't want to have to worry about recognizing all these people's faces. I just want to do me I don't need a drink from from nobody.

19:15I could buy my own drink. So when this when this guy comes up and he knows everything about her and she turns him down and knows nothing about him and then he follows her home or goes to her job or does creepy like creeps do. Well, if she ends up going to the police and they say, "Hey, can you tell me anything about him?" I'm sure you had your facial recognition glasses on. What What was his name? And whatever. Oh, I I didn't have that. You You didn't have your Why didn't you have your glasses on? Oh, I don't I don't I don't have those. I choose to opt out. Okay. Do Do you know what he looks like? Cuz memory can be tricky. Cuz at this point, let's let's let's pretend this is years down the line. The more and more people integrate with this technology, the more and more they're going to have lack of faith of our natural memories.

20:16It's kind of like, think about how with cell phones, we stopped knowing what phone numbers were. You know, you might know a couple numbers and that's about it, but for the most part, it's just a name that pops up on your phone. So that same that same muscle that doesn't get flexed there, what if that is what happens with our memories? At least even if you know for this woman who chooses not to have the glasses, her memory is fine. But even if your memor is fine, the everybody else, this is how they they see people now. Your memory isn't to be trusted. Your memory is just a memory of the last time you remembered that and then so on and so forth. So, how can I trust your memory? I mean, it's so fallible. How can I really trust what you're saying? I mean, we can look, but you know how much better if you could just tell me who it was.

21:13If you could just pull back that little little clip. I don't know if it's like always recording or some like that. You can have some emergency SOS button that where it's automatically recording the video and the audio. You could have had all of these things, but now it's in the hands of the creep. You got to It's It's almost like you have to continue to evolve with the technology or you really do get left behind. There's There's nobody that is able to just go to the grocery store and pay with a physical check anymore like they used to. You can't do that. this uh this whole privacy concern. It's one of those where you either care about it or you don't. It's either something you've thought about before or you genuinely just don't think about it. And again, like I said, you got people that that might push back and be like, "Well, if you're even if you're even worried about it, then it's probably because you're doing some some criminal You're worried about being being watched.

22:21What's what's wrong? What are you doing? We need to watch this person. you're already acting a little bit suspicious because you're worried about being seen and that's not something to worry about. And in the words of Edward Snowden, arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say. You can't just ignore the fact that your privacy is being taken advantage of just because you don't have anything that you want to keep private and take it to the extreme. Even if you feel like you're not doing any bad things, you do have a line somewhere. Like if somebody had a a camera while you were taking a or when you were in the shower or something like that, you probably be like, "Hey, bro. What what's what's going on? This is this is my me time."

23:16You know, this is the one time. How far does this continue to progress? Just because you're not somebody that has a whole monologue or a speech to say, is that does that mean that you're somebody that says, "Well, freedom of speech really doesn't matter." And I wish I wish that that metaphor was or analogy was enough to actually convince people. But the fact that there are people out there that say freedom of speech shouldn't be a thing. Well, that that already tells me that that if you have a certain type of belief, you're not really going to change. If you're the type of person that thinks that somebody doesn't need freedom of speech, well, you might be the type of person that thinks somebody doesn't need freedom of privacy. And I think that the fact that we can't just put our heads down, the fact that we can't just ignore it, that's that's honestly what's so scary about it.

24:20We're being forced to integrate. And I'm I'm the last person that's ever going to be like, "No, we we shouldn't change. We should keep things how they are." But damn. At the same time, what what am I supposed to do? I'm I'm just never going to get whatever these glasses are or eventually it's going to be more of a thing. That's one of the predictions I've had about the future is that the whole augmented reality thing is going to be a part of your average average day. When you want to look at the menu at a restaurant, when you want to see signs or whatever it is, a lot of things are going to be in augmented reality. Why? Well, because it's a lot cheaper than having something physical. Think about how you have the billboards that instead of, you know, rolling out entire like big posters or whatever they used to do, they just make them digital now and you can just change out the image.

25:18Why wouldn't we do that? Why wouldn't we uh eventually move on to augmented reality? So, what am I going to be one of those people that says, "No, it's okay. I'm just going to opt out." I can't I can't do that. It's kind of like my cell phone. Like I I want to be able to talk without somebody recording this just to serve me up an ad and use my data for whatever the else. But that's what they do. And I've kind of accepted it. It's it's one of those things that it's like the boiling frog type of method where it's it's not all at once. Little by little more time that goes on, the more comfortable you get. And um I got this other other clip from Moonshots that was talking a little bit more about basically how you can't you can't just opt out of this. How even thinking that you you have the option to not be a part of this is is already saying that you're going to be wiped over or you're going to be washed over in this title wave to come.

26:24You put your head in the sand. Well, the future's coming and there is absolutely nothing that we can do about it.

26:31Cuz I think a lot of people look at this and say, "Well, I'm not going to wear these glasses and and you know, spy on everybody and record everything." But once you've experienced the face recognition and then all the metadata that pops up, you're like, "Well, now I'm not competitive with the world unless I actually have them." And and it creates this huge amount of uh techno pure pressure. And so you don't really have the option to opt out. I I think I think this is going to become uh part of normative culture. I mean, we had the glass hole episode with Google for a while. Um, you know, that didn't work out. But, you know, first off, I what I find fascinating here is that to get these allowed and to to get people to start to accept them, their pilot program is being uh is is being done with people who are visually impaired, right? So, it's it's like a soft on-ramp.

27:27Yeah. That's what they did with the Neuralink, too. It's, you know, it gives you a good politically correct excuse to do what you really want to do, which is everybody.

27:35Exactly. And I'm glad they said the quiet part out loud because that's exactly what they're doing. Like, oh, we didn't we didn't roll it out last time because of technological reasons and ethical reasons. You know, we just don't care about those ethics anymore. We just want to have this right now for the visually impaired. Think about how helpful that will be. Imagine being blind and having a technology like this. Can you really tell me that you don't want to help blind people? Well, And just like Buddy said, they did the same thing with Nurling. So, of course, they're going to first help the people that are visually impaired. This is where you get the blessing of the majority and then you roll it out to everybody. Then everybody's going to be like, "Well, tell me a little bit more about it. I know this can can help them, but how can it help me?" And because you have this artificial intelligence that's baked into it, well, it's really able to help you.

28:31Well, this is this is so and so. you met them a month ago and you know this is this is what you talked about. It's very helpful. It's very helpful. But again, you got to think about the trade-offs. And Mark Zuckerberg said it himself back in 2010. People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time. It is the boiling frog. This was back in 2010, 16 years ago. And we've just continued to evolve in his words. We've continued to integrate more and more with these technologies that are coming out. And now because of AI, they're coming out faster than ever before. And it's going to it's going to continue to speed up. This is going to be exponential growth.

29:28We We might as well say goodbye. We already barely have any privacy, but it's about to get a whole lot worse.