‘Turn the cameras off:’ London’s growing privacy pushback against smart glasses

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The bars, theaters and restaurants dotting central London may not seem like a conflict zone. But many venue owners are facing a difficult fight over a new and, some say, potentially dangerous device: smart glasses.

The glasses — which can capture video, photos and audio from the wearer’s perspective — are growing in popularity. Eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica, which Meta partners with for its glasses, said 7 million pairs of AI glasses were sold in 2025. Meta is holding its Connect conference this week, where it’s expected to announce new smart glasses without cameras, according to The Information. Samsung and Google are expected to debut new jointly developed smart glasses this fall.

But as the technology becomes more widespread, so too has the backlash. Videos posted on social media showing men who appear to film women without their knowledge have raised questions about consent — and whether existing privacy laws can keep pace with technology that allows people to record almost invisibly.

“It makes it harder and harder to protect yourself by just looking around and screening for things,” Irina Raicu, director of the internet ethics program at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, previously told CNN. “So, the whole notion of consent is kind of disintegrating.”

London, along with New York and Australia, is emerging as a bellwether for how people and businesses are responding to the growing tech. Some hospitality and entertainment venues have introduced restrictions or bans, and anti-smart glasses advertisements have begun appearing at some bus stations throughout London. One skewers Kylie Jenner’s ad campaign for Meta glasses, transforming her into a skeletal X-Ray with the tagline: “We’re Always Watching.”

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The sentiment echoes a broader ban across the United Kingdom from August that prohibits smart glasses in the courtroom.

Some Londoners told CNN that smart glasses make them feel uneasy in places where people expect a degree of privacy, like bars, restaurants and other social settings.

Popular pub chain Wetherspoons has prohibited customers from recording using the glasses. “I don’t really want to be filmed when I’m just out having a couple of pints,” Zak, a student at a Wetherspoons pub in central London, told CNN. He said he had seen videos on TikTok in which people appeared unaware they were being filmed, adding that covering the glasses’ recording light was “ridiculous.”

Serena, another Wetherspoons customer, said she was particularly concerned about the possibility of being filmed without knowing where the footage might end up.

A Wetherspoons spokesperson told CNN, “With regard to Meta glasses, our instinct was to say, ‘turn the cameras off.’”

Meta says the camera on its glasses won’t record if the recording light has been covered. In August, the company said it updated its glasses to prevent users from covering the light after they started recording, coming after it previously enabled the glasses to detect whether the light had been tampered with. Meta also said it has cracked down on videos shared on social media that show wearers using their AI glasses to harass people around them.

“Naturally some places shouldn’t be filmed at all and that’s reasonable, but rules should be applied consistently,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement to CNN. “Our glasses have a light that turns on to let people know when a photo or video is taken, something smartphones and other cameras don’t have.”

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Google has been down this road before. It tried popularizing smart glasses more than a decade ago with its now discontinued Google Glass eyewear, which sparked similar privacy concerns.

Sameer Samat , Google’s president of the Android ecosystem, said the company isn’t surprised by the recent pushback. Details like how the glasses indicate when they’re recording and whether users can work around those safeguards “really, really matter,” he told CNN in August, adding that Google is taking those concerns into account when developing its glasses. Like Meta’s glasses, Samsung’s upcoming glasses powered by Google’s software will have a privacy light that’s tamper-resistant.

Samsung and Google declined to comment when reached by CNN.

Solving the privacy problem won’t be easy, according to Calli Shroeder, director of the AI and Human Rights program at the Electronic and Privacy Information Center (EPIC). Many potential solutions — like features that would blur peoples’ faces automatically when recording or require their legal consent before uploading videos — would be challenging to implement and still wouldn’t fully address the risks.

One possible remedy would be to make it so that glasses detect their location and automatically disable recording in sensitive areas like playgrounds and locker rooms. But that would entail making sure the glasses could sense their surroundings autonomously, which could also raise privacy issues.

At London’s Piccadilly Theatre, workers and attendees said smart glasses could undermine the experience of live performance and negatively impact actors’ livelihoods.

A lot of the appeal of going to theaters is that the performance remains a mystery right up until showtime, a benefit that stealthy filming could threaten, said Bradley, a waiter and theatre director.

“It’s not a huge wide scale media like TV and film, it’s a much more enclosed environment, which you’re more intrigued to go to without those spoilers or without that pre-formed opinion of it,” he said.

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A spokesperson for ATG Entertainment, which operates several of London’s iconic West End theatres including Picadilly Theatre, told CNN that audience members will be asked to remove the eyewear and delete any footage if caught with them.

Many movie theaters in the UK are also banning the use of smart glasses due to piracy concerns, the UK Cinema Association (UKCA) said late last month.

The growing unease comes as technology companies continue to invest heavily in wearable devices, betting that glasses capable of capturing and processing the world around their users could become the next major consumer technology platform.

The glasses allow users to listen to music, take calls and snap photos hands-free, and some tech companies believe they could one day be the preferred way to communicate with AI assistants.

Christoph Schmidt/picture-alliance/dpa/AP

A Meta spokesperson told CNN their glasses allow people to “stay in the moment, from listening to music to live translation or hands-free calls.” The glasses provide “critical new technology” to visually impaired consumers, the spokesperson said, adding that limiting how people can use this would be a “major step backwards.”

Advocacy groups, including the UK’s Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) have warned that overregulation of smart eyewear could strip those who are blind or visually impaired of a key accessibility tool. The new tech can help with daily tasks like browsing restaurant menus, reading street signs, or describing scenery, according to RNIB.

Shipments of smart glasses grew by 212% year-over-year in the first half of 2026, according to market research firm Counterpoint Research . Meta leads the industry with about 84% of the market.

“I think there’s a huge fear of being like left behind in the race of these new technologies,” said Shroeder, the human rights director at EPIC. “I think also it’s very easy for these tech companies to fall into a bubble.”

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遍布伦敦市中心的酒吧、剧院和餐馆看似并非冲突地区，但许多场所的经营者正面临着一场艰难的斗争，这场斗争的焦点是一种新型的、有人认为可能存在危险的设备：智能眼镜。

这种能够从佩戴者视角拍摄视频、照片和音频的眼镜越来越受欢迎。眼镜巨头依视路陆逊梯卡（EssilorLuxottica）是Meta眼镜的合作伙伴，该公司表示，到2025年，人工智能眼镜的销量将达到700万副。据The Information报道，Meta本周将举办Connect大会，预计届时将发布一款不带摄像头的新型智能眼镜。三星和谷歌预计将于今年秋季推出联合开发的新型智能眼镜。

但随着这项技术的普及，随之而来的反对声浪也越来越高。社交媒体上流传的视频显示，一些男性似乎在未经女性同意的情况下进行拍摄，这引发了人们对知情同意问题的质疑——以及现有的隐私法是否能够跟上这项几乎可以隐蔽地进行录像的技术发展步伐。

“仅仅通过四处查看和筛选信息来保护自己变得越来越难，”圣克拉拉大学马克库拉应用伦理中心互联网伦理项目主任伊琳娜·雷库此前告诉CNN。“因此，整个同意的概念正在瓦解。”

伦敦与纽约和澳大利亚一样，正逐渐成为人们和企业如何应对科技发展的风向标。一些餐饮和娱乐场所已经出台了限制或禁令，反智能眼镜的广告也开始出现在伦敦的一些公交车站。其中一则广告讽刺了凯莉·詹娜为Meta眼镜拍摄的广告，将她变成了一张骷髅X光片，并配以标语：“我们时刻都在监视着你。”

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这一观点与英国自 8 月起实施的一项更广泛的禁令相呼应，该禁令禁止在法庭上使用智能眼镜。

一些伦敦人告诉 CNN，智能眼镜让他们在酒吧、餐馆和其他社交场所等人们期望有一定的隐私的地方感到不安。

知名连锁酒吧Wetherspoons已禁止顾客使用酒杯进行录像。“我只是出去喝几杯啤酒，真的不想被拍，”扎克（Zak）告诉CNN。他是伦敦市中心一家Wetherspoons酒吧的学生。他说，他曾在TikTok上看到过一些视频，视频中的人似乎没有意识到自己正在被拍摄，他还补充说，遮住酒杯上的录像灯“很荒谬”。

另一位 Wetherspoons 的顾客 Serena 表示，她特别担心被拍摄，却不知道这些录像最终会流传到哪里。

Wetherspoons 的一位发言人告诉 CNN：“对于 Meta 眼镜，我们的第一反应是‘关掉摄像头’。”

Meta公司表示，如果其眼镜上的录制指示灯被遮挡，摄像头将不会进行录制。该公司在8月份表示，已对其眼镜进行更新，以防止用户在开始录制后遮挡指示灯。此前，该公司已使眼镜具备检测指示灯是否被篡改的功能。Meta公司还表示，已严厉打击在社交媒体上流传的、用户利用其AI眼镜骚扰他人的视频。

Meta公司的一位发言人在给CNN的一份声明中表示：“当然，有些地方根本不应该被拍摄，这很合理，但规则应该始终如一地执行。我们的眼镜上有一个指示灯，会在拍照或录像时亮起，这是智能手机和其他相机所不具备的。”

苏珊娜·爱尔兰/路透社

谷歌此前也曾尝试过类似的做法。十多年前，它曾推出现已停产的谷歌眼镜，试图推广智能眼镜，但这款眼镜也引发了类似的隐私担忧。

谷歌安卓生态系统总裁萨米尔·萨马特表示，公司对近期的反对并不感到意外。他8月份接受CNN采访时表示，眼镜如何指示录像状态以及用户是否能够绕过这些安全措施等细节“至关重要”，并补充说，谷歌在开发眼镜时已考虑到了这些担忧。与Meta的眼镜一样，三星即将推出的、搭载谷歌软件的眼镜也将配备防篡改的隐私指示灯。

CNN联系三星和谷歌寻求置评，但两家公司均拒绝置评。

电子与隐私信息中心（EPIC）人工智能与人权项目主任卡莉·施罗德表示，解决隐私问题并非易事。许多潜在的解决方案——例如在录制视频时自动模糊人脸或要求上传视频前获得合法同意——实施起来都极具挑战性，而且即便实施起来，也无法彻底消除风险。

一种可能的解决方案是让眼镜能够检测自身位置，并在游乐场和更衣室等敏感区域自动关闭录像功能。但这需要确保眼镜能够自主感知周围环境，而这也可能引发隐私问题。

伦敦皮卡迪利剧院的工作人员和观众表示，智能眼镜可能会破坏现场表演的体验，并对演员的生计产生负面影响。

布拉德利是一名服务员兼剧院导演，他说，去剧院看戏的一大吸引力在于，直到演出开始前，演出内容都是个谜，而偷偷拍摄可能会威胁到这种好处。

他说：“它不像电视和电影那样是大规模的媒体，而是一个更加封闭的环境，你反而会更有兴趣在没有剧透或没有先入为主的观念的情况下去体验它。”

Martin Bertrand/Hans Lucas/法新社/Getty Images

运营伦敦西区多家标志性剧院（包括皮卡迪利剧院）的 ATG Entertainment 的一位发言人告诉 CNN，如果被发现佩戴此类眼镜，观众将被要求摘下眼镜并删除任何录像。

英国电影协会（UKCA）上月底表示，由于担心盗版，英国许多电影院也禁止使用智能眼镜。

随着科技公司继续大力投资可穿戴设备，人们的不安情绪日益加剧。这些公司押注能够捕捉和处理用户周围世界的眼镜可能会成为下一个主要的消费技术平台。

这款眼镜可以让用户免提听音乐、接打电话和拍照，一些科技公司认为，它有朝一日可能会成为与人工智能助手沟通的首选方式。

克里斯托夫·施密特/picture-alliance/dpa/美联社

Meta公司的一位发言人告诉CNN，他们的眼镜能让人们“专注于当下，无论是听音乐、实时翻译还是免提通话”。这位发言人表示，这款眼镜为视障消费者提供了“至关重要的新技术”，并补充说，限制人们使用这项技术将是“一大倒退”。

包括英国皇家盲人协会（RNIB）在内的倡导团体警告称，对智能眼镜的过度监管可能会剥夺盲人或视力障碍者一项重要的辅助工具。据RNIB称，这项新技术可以帮助他们完成日常任务，例如浏览餐厅菜单、阅读路标或描述风景。

市场研究公司Counterpoint Research的数据显示，2026年上半年智能眼镜出货量同比增长212%。Meta公司以约84%的市场份额领跑该行业。

“我认为人们非常害怕在这些新技术竞赛中落后，”EPIC人权主任施罗德说。“我也认为这些科技公司很容易陷入泡沫。”