Opinion
The best thing I ever filmed with a pair of smart glasses was my son, nearly two years old, discovering that a football is way more fun when you fall over on top of it.
I was wearing Metaβs Oakley Vanguards, which I had on loan from the company and typically use when on long runs and half-marathon training. But theyβre also great for precious moments with your kids.
My hands were full β they tend to be when youβve got a toddler β and I said, βhey Meta, take a videoβ, and got a clip no phone could have. The moment you get your phone out to start recording something, is almost always exactly the moment it stops happening.
A few years earlier, with an older pair of Ray-Ban Metas, I got footage I still look back at now β kicking the footy around the oval with my wife, going for a run with a mate, splashing at the beach. Those videos look like being there, rather than watching someone film it.
Which is all to say I like these glasses. Theyβre fun and super useful. On a run, they play podcasts through bone conduction speakers, tell me how fast Iβm going, read out my WhatsApp messages and let me film something without breaking stride. They look like ordinary Oakleys, just with a camera, microphone and AI built in. The only thing that really gave me pause was the price.
Now Iβm apprehensive about something else.
Iβve spent the past fortnight writing stories about people using these things to film strangers without consent. Researchers at the University of Sydney went through 350 videos and found about 60 per cent of the covert ones involved potential harassment. Critics now call the category βpervert glassesβ, while Digital Rights Watch has a better term: βSpecs offenders.β
Which means my running glasses have become an uncomfortable presence for people who see me coming. Is he recording me? I have no way of answering which doesnβt sound exactly like what a creep might say.
The shift in attitude has meant Iβve stopped wearing them in public as much, given the weird looks and occasional uncomfortable questions about whether Iβm recording.
We have been here before. Googleβs first effort, Google Glass, died a decade ago because its wearers were routinely abused in bars and labelled βglassholesβ. We werenβt ready.
Melbourne has watched the same movie before with dockless bike share and e-scooters, both of which worked well technically and both of which ended up in the Yarra. The technology was defeated by the few bad apples who used it worst.
Smart glasses are well intentioned and technically ready. Socially, they are being wrecked at a rapid clip by their worst users.
Thereβs a second problem: who is holding the reins. Meta has spent 20 years demonstrating it will collect what it can until someone makes it stop. It might sound like an unfair caricature, but itβs also the reputation the company has earned, and reputation is everything when youβre asking strangers to trust a camera on your face.
Metaβs answer, from chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth at the weekend, is that the capture light canβt be switched off and covering it stops the camera working. And itβs true: my Oakleys flash a bright white light when theyβre recording anything.
The $89 Kmart pair that sold out last month makes no such promise, and I have no confidence that a cut-price, own-brand device is a gold standard for anything.
Itβs worth pointing out that Australia has no general right to privacy in public. Filming at the beach or an oval is fair game. Itβs those in-between places β the gym, the cafe, the change room corridor at Kmart β where the law says itβs OK to film, but every social instinct says absolutely not, and for good reason.
So hereβs my take, as someone who likes the glasses and wants to keep using them. Letβs pause. Not forever, and not with an import ban, which the attorney-general has already ruled out. Just long enough to work out the rules. Weβre not ready for smart glasses, but maybe we can be.
At a minimum, recording indicators should be mandatory, standardised across every brand sold here, and tamper-proof. Greens senator David Shoebridge is right that nothing currently requires a light, a sound, or any outward sign at all.
A few more ideas worth considering: a specific offence for covert capture by wearable cameras, so victims stop depending on a privacy tort that makes them prove serious harm. And product standards built into the device, including bystander-blurring on by default. And an obligation on manufacturers to act on misuse rather than merely selling the hardware and shrugging.
These things would carry a real cost, too, because there are people for whom these glasses are not a toy. The eSafety commissioner points out they can read text aloud to blind users and caption live speech for deaf ones, hands-free.
The answer isnβt to simply ban the glasses. Itβs to create better rules to stop the creeps.
Letβs get this right so I can stop the uncomfortable looks and go back to just being the bloke who filmed his son falling over a football.
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David Swan is the technology editor for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously technology editor for The Australian newspaper.Connect via X or email.