Smart Glasses, Blind Spots: How Meta's Wearables Are Watching You
7/17/202641 min
Virat Kohli's slick Oakley Meta ad made smart glasses look effortless. But behind the "Hey Meta" voice commands lies a growing privacy crisis. From Nairobi outsourcing workers reviewing graphic footage to women being filmed without consent on beaches and in stairwells, the harms are real and disproportionately gendered. Host Dia Rekhi talks to Dr Milica Stilinovic, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Sydney, and ET's tech expert Suraksha P, who break down how these devices erode democratic privacy norms, Meta's controversial pilot with the Gujarat government to aid visually impaired citizens, and why experts call it closer to coerced consent than genuine choice.
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Check out other interesting episodes like: Why Every Influencer Has a Lawyer on Speed Dial, ET Deep Dive: The Water in the Vial, Corn Man: The Man Who Quietly Cornered Half of India's Popcorn Market, ET Deep Dive:The DNA Fix and much more.
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Credits: Oakley | Meta, Meta Glasses, CBS19, FRANCE 24 English
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsVirat Kohli· Soundbite0:00
[instrumental music] [door closing] [latch clicking] Hey, Meta. [device beeping] What's the most difficult boundary ever played?
Suraksha P· Guest0:09
A 93.7 meter straight boundary.
Virat Kohli· Soundbite0:12
Got it.
Diya Rekhi· Host0:13
[bat hitting] [upbeat music] The chances that you missed this uber cool ad are slim. Virat Kohli sporting Oakley Meta glasses with a slick training montage and upbeat background music. What's not to like, right? But what I want you to pay close attention to is this part of the ad.
Virat Kohli· Soundbite0:33
Hey, Meta. [device beeping] Record this in slow motion. Hey, Meta. [device beeping] Send this video to coach.
Diya Rekhi· Host0:37
And just like that, Virat Kohli recorded the bowler, played his shot, and could send it to his coach without taking his hands off the bat, without even having to whip out his smartphone, without needing an elaborate camera setup, just with a voice command and a pair of smart glasses. Pretty cool, right? [instrumental music] Explains why they're the new in gadget and have everyone from Virat Kohli to Kylie Jenner endorsing it.
Virat Kohli· Soundbite1:05
Hey, Meta. [device beeping] Hey, Meta. [device beeping] Hey, Meta. [device beeping] Translate this.
Diya Rekhi· Host1:09
[upbeat music] Not just celebrities, content creators have also been using and talking about these smart glasses incessantly. Basically, how they use these glasses to help them with their work while also looking smart and snazzy. But just as the hype for smart glasses goes up, so