Right now, the real barrier to smart glasses is trust. Sure, earlier models were too bulky to pass as everyday eyewear. But today’s sleeker designs come with a different concern: their onboard cameras can be used to film and photograph people without their knowledge. Now Samsung’s smart glasses, reportedly called Galaxy Glasses, are prepping their debut.
But can Samsung make camera-equipped eyewear that people feel comfortable wearing—and being around?
Would you notice if the guy chatting you up was filming you? Toluwa Omitowju didn’t. She found out when friends, and people she hadn’t heard from in years, sent her a pickup-line video of herself that she told CBS News got “probably over 200,000 views.” She isn’t alone. People have been using Ray-Ban Meta glasses to quietly record others on dates and in conversation, then post the footage online.
That’s disconcerting. When someone holds up a phone, you know what’s happening. A camera tucked into ordinary-looking frames is easy to miss.
Is a tiny recording light enough to make us feel safe?
To be fair, Meta has built safeguards. A white LED on its glasses blinks while you record, and on second-generation models, covering it turns off the camera. Meta also says the camera shuts down if someone physically tampers with the light. Those protections haven’t always held up.
In August, CBS tested the light and found that covering it after recording had started didn’t seem to stop the recording. Meta says it has since closed the gap.
Samsung’s smart glasses promise privacy safeguards
So will Samsung do anything differently? On paper, a lot of the right things. In a Samsung interview, XR lead James Choi describes a bystander-facing LED and an inner LED that glow when recording is active. Wear detection turns recording off when you take the glasses off. What’s more, a “thwart detection” feature stops recording if someone blocks the outer light.
That encourages me. But I want to know: how visible is that LED on a sunny sidewalk? And how reliably does the blocking detection work?
Samsung says it will keep improving these features. But the real test comes when the glasses reportedly go on sale in the US in mid-December, far from controlled demos.
Smart glasses need bystanders to trust them, too
With Gentle Monster and Warby Parker designing the frames, Samsung may well make smart glasses people want to wear. But stylish frames and handy AI translation won’t count for much if everyone nearby feels watched.
As a tech journalist, I’ll judge Samsung’s new glasses on whether they make recording obvious and accountable, too.