AI Glasses | Opinion
‘Perv Glasses’ Detector Apps: More Harm Than Good?
A conversation with a friend left me wondering what these apps are teaching people to think about the person wearing the glasses.
I had an interesting conversation last week with an old friend, who casually mentioned her ‘perv glasses detector’ app when talking about AI in general. Obviously this piqued my interest, so we began discussing the app and her reasoning behind feeling she needed it.
The first thing I asked was what this was. Perhaps I’ve been living under a rock for months, but I hadn’t realised quite how much choice there was. Looking on Google Play, I can see a range of detector apps, with Nearby Glasses alone showing 100,000-plus downloads.
The principle is simple enough: these apps look for Bluetooth Low Energy signals associated with smart glasses and send an alert that a pair may be nearby. It doesn’t indicate that recording is taking place. They’re picking up signals from a device, and they can get it wrong.
The more interesting question was ‘Why?’. Why would someone feel that this app was of benefit to them and that they needed to be audibly notified when a wearer was near? The answer, being honest, only raised more questions.
“So I know when there’s a perv nearby who might be filming me.”
For me, that’s both saddening and indicative of the lack of awareness around Meta glasses that exists online.
Of course, my nature was to play devil’s advocate first and ask questions that might prompt a different point of view:
“Do you have one that detects pervs using their phone camera? A body cam? A hidden cam?”
“How do you know a user is a ‘perv’, or does that cover all the users?”
“What do you do after the notification goes? Do we ring a bell, point and yell ‘Shame, Shame’ at them until they leave? What ACTUAL help do you get from it?”
‘The app makes me feel safe’
I get her reasons, of course. She’s seen a social media narrative build around the glasses. She’s seen the videos of creepy guys bypassing the recording light to record pick-up videos and give women unwanted attention. She’s also seen people claiming to have workarounds for the safeguards. It’s an uncomfortable thought, and I can understand why women exposed to that narrative would be suspicious.
Nobody should hide from the fact that these fears didn’t come from nowhere; they came from a series of ‘content creators’ with zero respect for privacy and, in my opinion, very low standards of basic decency. It’s entirely inappropriate and that point shouldn’t be forgotten in this discussion.
Of course there was a tongue-in-cheek back and forth over it, as I happily told her I wear them every day, listening to music, translating when on business trips abroad and recording hands-free when I need to. I pointed out that the same fears over privacy, some of which have absolutely materialised, were present in the early 2000s when mobile phones began getting cameras. Yet she happily uses hers all the time and indeed had it in her hand as we spoke.
We compared filming with the glasses. As she looked at the recording light, I then told her to look down at my phone, which was pointing directly at her and could easily have been filming. Her attention had been entirely on the glasses. That doesn’t mean glasses raise no privacy concerns of their own, but it did show how easily the more familiar camera could be overlooked.
We then debated her point that ‘the app makes me feel safe’. I naturally disagree that it actually makes her safe from filming, but who am I to tell a woman how she should feel about the prospect of being filmed and given unwanted attention? In that moment, the feeling of safety can be more important than the nuance surrounding the reality, and there needs to be appreciation for the value of that feeling.
I don’t have a problem with someone wanting an alert that smart glasses are nearby. The leap from that notification to deciding there’s a ‘perv’ in the room is where I start to have a problem.
Who are we actually labelling?
But then it dawned on me that apps like these could cause harm, perhaps inadvertently.
The first thing she does when the app pings is look around the room to identify who is wearing them and is ‘the threat’ — her words. I presented a few scenarios to her which surprised her: the man sat in the restaurant who struggles to read and is using his glasses to read the menu; the blind man on public transport using them to help describe his surroundings; the hard-of-hearing man using Conversation Focus where it’s available.
These aren’t imaginary uses for the technology. Be My Eyes lets blind and low-vision wearers contact a sighted volunteer through their glasses. Conversation Focus amplifies the voice of the person they’re talking to through the glasses’ open-ear speakers, helping them hear the conversation over background noise. We explored these and other practical uses in our feature on Meta glasses and accessibility.
These people aren’t just perfectly innocent glasses wearers. They may actively need their glasses to make their lives easier and achieve a higher level of independence. Their reward for this? An app that pings to alert someone to their presence, followed by an assumption that they’re a ‘threat’ or some kind of pervert.
Now, credit to my friend: she wasn’t aware of any of these uses and was mortified to realise she’d internally been labelling people ‘pervs’ who were potentially quite vulnerable and would have benefited from empathy and understanding rather than suspicion and unpleasant names. She’s a real advocate for the rights of disabled people to be recognised, so was genuinely upset to think she might have been casting judgement on those same people.
There’s a responsibility, but on both sides
A theme that’s always been consistent for me is responsibility. Glasses users, in my opinion, have a duty to use them with courtesy, not film people who don’t wish to be filmed or may not realise, and help people understand what the recording light means. We should be willing to explain what we’re using them for when someone is uncomfortable.
I think that responsibility goes both ways. The people creating these apps should be very clearly telling users that glasses wearers are not automatically ‘pervs’ and may well be using them for a whole range of perfectly valid reasons. Listening to music, taking a call, translating a conversation or getting help to read something shouldn’t make someone an object of suspicion.
To be fair, some developers already make important points about this. Nearby Glasses is free and explicitly warns people not to harass anyone. ZuckOff makes clear that a detection isn’t proof of recording. Those warnings deserve recognition.
I’d like the people creating these apps to go further and actively push back against the ‘perv glasses’ narrative. Make the legitimate uses clear, particularly the accessibility features and the possibility that the wearer has a disability you can’t see. That belongs alongside the alert, where the user is making their judgement about the person in front of them.
The label does harm of its own
The tiny minority of glasses users who use their glasses for nefarious purposes need to stop. The millions of legitimate users should be the most vocal in calling them out. However, the ‘perv glasses’ media hype should follow the creeps right out of the door too.
It’s damaging and dangerous to hundreds of thousands of people across the globe whose lives have been made better by these glasses. I think it’s time that point gets the recognition it deserves and creates space for a sensible discussion about privacy, courtesy and the people wearing them.