Apple's Smart Glasses Delayed, As Engineers Consider Privacy Concerns (digitaltrends.com) 47
Digital Trends reports:
Apple could unveil its first smart glasses at WWDC in June 2027, followed by a consumer release toward the end of the year, according to Bloomberg... Part of the delay reportedly stems from Apple's engineering and marketing teams spending more time refining the product and deciding how to address the privacy concerns...
Apple has reportedly considered glasses without cameras, as well as a version where the cameras can analyse the surroundings but cannot record photos or video. Such an approach could still support object recognition, navigation, Siri, calls, and music playback. The company is also expected to favor on-device processing, avoid facial recognition, keep recordings away from AI training, and use a more visible light around the camera.
Apple has reportedly considered glasses without cameras, as well as a version where the cameras can analyse the surroundings but cannot record photos or video. Such an approach could still support object recognition, navigation, Siri, calls, and music playback. The company is also expected to favor on-device processing, avoid facial recognition, keep recordings away from AI training, and use a more visible light around the camera.
Re: Apple Glassholes coming (Score:2)
People forgot the second name of Google Glass, and prime use that gave them fame â" "porn glasses"
Without pics, vido, or facial rec; not glasshole (Score:2)
Google then meta. Now apple will unleash the Glassholes!
Except Apple sells hardware not you. Without pics, video, or facial recognition its not in glasshole territory. I’m sure there could be other social or fashion faux pas, but Apple will be less troublesome than Google or Meta.
Can you (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can you (Score:5, Informative)
The EU can. Using these things without informed consent from everybody present is a crime. In Germany, even owning them, if the camera is not obvious enough, is a crime. See? Simple.
Re:Can you (Score:4, Informative)
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Interesting. Good link with actual explanations.
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You're presumably right but you're not contributing a new argument. This boils down to exactly what the OP liqu1d was already saying: that Apple can't address the problem "short of removing the camera" because nothing else can be conciliated with the (legally-protected) privacy concerns.
Using these things without informed consent from everybody present is a crime.
There could be some local exceptions where consent is presumed. For example in Spain one does not need a permit for "genuinely filming as a tourist with a handheld camera/smartphone, moving continuously without equipment set
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There could be some local exceptions where consent is presumed. For example in Spain one does not need a permit for "genuinely filming as a tourist with a handheld camera/smartphone, moving continuously without equipment setup or blocking pedestrian traffic" https://cameracrewspain.com/fi... [cameracrewspain.com]
This is also known as the "panorama exception". AFAIK it exists EU-wide. It requires that the filming is obvious (so smart-glasses do not qualify) and that no person is put in camera focus. This is not a presumption of consent at all. It is a trade-off between two different legal goods and here the legal stance (usually put into local laws) is that under the conditions I just outlined the potential damage to privacy is small enough that the benefits of being able to take a panorama are bigger. Something sim
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It isn't EU wide. Wikipedia has a map. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Interesting. Thanks for posting that.
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Also funny how currently right-wing run Italy has a ban on it...
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It could come with a headband with a large flashing orange light on top which turns on whenever the camera is running.
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Given what Apple did with Airtags, it seems doubtful that they will make any meaningful effort to enforce the privacy rights of others. When Airtags came out they were a stalker's dream, and even now, after Apple make some token effort to address the issues, they are one of the most effective way to track someone without consent.
Fixing the headline (Score:2)
Headline - Apple’s Smart Glasses Will Need to Overcome Meta’s Privacy Reputation
Fixed headline - Apple Executives and Legal Teams Delaying Smart Glasses Release due to Litigation Fears
Smart Glasses are the tools (Score:4, Interesting)
It was mostly a developer device (Score:2)
Apple Vision Pro was a hard flop. Why would Apple Glasses be any better?
It was a developer device, that also mined the early adopter community for some early funding and beta testing. It was never really intended for the general market. Developers need access to such a device years before the public oriented version is released.
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They sure advertised it a lot and sold it across the country then world to consumers, but it wasn't really intended for the general market?
Not that initial version, despite how the marketing and public relations departments talked.
This was radically new technology. Apple desperately needed feedback. Developers desperately needed time to learn the tech and the environment. That’s what this high priced first release was really addressing. The high price ensured that only devs and early adopters would get one. Both of these groups being excellent beta testers. Also testing that price point with early adopters provided feedback regarding
Re: It was mostly a developer device (Score:2)
I see we have an apple fanboy here.
No, it was not "developer's tool". Developers don't buy shit for which there is no user base.
It was a massive flop. No amount of "early adopter's" money can cover r&d on that thing. Total sales were fraction of a percent of iPhone sales.
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I see we have an apple fanboy here.
Nope. That’s an incorrect rationalization you use to dismiss inconvenient truths. I use and develop for Mac, Windows, Linux. Never bought into the respective religions. Different tools for different jobs.
No, it was not "developer's tool”.
I’m referring to reality, not the press releases. The who retail sales pitch was just to get early adopters to spend some money closer to their willingness to pay, rather than what an actual retail unit would need to be priced at. Plus the early adopters are useful beta testers.
The immersive
Just say no (Score:5, Interesting)
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True story, he was against Cupertino having affordable housing. Ah, whatever, grumble grumble
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Jobs always said that he was most proud of what Apple didn't build.
Jobs 1.0 or 2.0? Because 1.0 got fired and his failing product, the Macintosh, was turned around by putting in some of the things he did not want. Things that Wozniak said should be there.
Re: (Score:1)
Steve Jobs was an asshole, loser, and a moron. I hope he find no peaceful rest. Jobs turned Apple into an overpriced fashion company that happens to have and use tech. And just like ever other overpriced fashion company, I have no respect for the founder, employees, or customers of said companies.
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Apple is not one for standardization without force. Depending on how broadly you define cloud-powered, Microsoft either wins or takes second, with Apple third. The other two is just a pissing contest of all three chasing each other.
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Yes, we all remember when Apple released the FaceTime protocol spec for cross-platform interoperability for video chat like Jobs said they would, when it was announced.
Similarly, we also all remember when Apple released the iMessage protocol so that everyone could use rich text messaging features regardless of platform, ending the "green bubble" bullshit.
What the fuck are you even talking about with "standardized"
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Apple you are better than this
That was before Tim Cook crossed Donald Jehosaphat Trump's palm with silver^Wgold.
No, Apple is not better than this.
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Apple you are better than this, don't do it.
Recent evidence would point to the opposite conclusion. They are not better than this, any more.
We're about 15 years past Jobs being able to exert any influence over what they do and don't build, and it shows.
Nah (Score:2)
The delayed it because they're scared it is going to fail just like the Vision Pro did.
Too easy to do means unpreventable (Score:1)
It won't be possible to stop this for long. Cameras are tiny and already you could just have one clipped to your collar. After a while it won't require big chunky glasses to mount one, it will just be ordinary eyewear.
Purely a marketing problem (Score:1)
It was a afterthought (Score:2, Insightful)
It's illuminating that they designed, built, and prepared to sell them, and only then did they stop to think about the privacy implications.
"They were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
It's like building a powerful, innovative new type of gun and only then asking, "Hey, what do you think would happen if you shot someone with this thing?"
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Yes, and they've doubtless spent some proper money getting this far - but they're only at the prototype stage (well, we assume so). Had they gone to production, then yes, that would have been royally stupid. You'd have thought after Google's product was named "glasshole" that Meta and Apple would know better, but perhaps not.
FWIW, there is some benefit in giving a department or group some "latitude" with regards to experimenting with products or whatever. That freedom can mean some really great new products
Zuck signature series (Score:1)
Meanwhile... Meta is releasing Zuck signature series sneakers with an upskirt cam with live streaming.
Getting punched in the face for wearing them? (Score:2)
This doesn't concern me at all. Natural selection at work.
Im going to secretly film you when I am looking at you. If anyone is not sure, that is not how to get a girlfriend, or any friend for that matter.
Going to be a very popular tech for creeps and perverts.
NO PRIVACY in public (Score:1)
There are cameras all over the place, not only Teslas driving by.
Get over it.
You fell for it AGAIN (Score:2)
This is an unconfirmed delay in an unannounced product, yet there are tons of people congratulating themselves for having got 'em.
I have a fix (Score:2)
It’s Not the Surveillance, It’s the Pe (Score:5, Interesting)
Every time you speak to another human being, two cameras and two directional microphones are already pointed at you. They are called eyes and ears. So the mere presence of sensors in a pair of glasses does not create some unprecedented privacy apocalypse. The real discontinuity is simpler and far more dangerous: carbon forgets; silicon does not. The problem with wearable AI is not that it can see and hear. The problem is that it may never forget.
Human memory is lossy, selective, contextual, and unreliable. Wearable AI can preserve exact language, identify speakers, timestamp encounters, correlate remarks across years, and retrieve a contradiction while the other person is still speaking. What was once an informal conversation can become permanent, searchable evidence.
Keeping the processing local would solve some very serious problems. It could prevent Meta, Apple, OpenAI, advertisers, data brokers, and governments from quietly accumulating everyone’s conversations in centralized databases. That matters. But it would not solve persistence itself. A private archive is still an archive, and the people inside it may never have agreed to become permanent entries in someone else’s searchable memory.
I say that as someone who strongly supports wearable AI and can imagine an immediate use for it. I would love glasses that could recall my previous conversations with someone, compare what they are saying now with what they said before, and help me identify equivocation, rhetorical sleight of hand, or a logical fallacy in real time. Having that capability in a coffee shop or at a political rally would be enormously useful to me.
But I understand the social friction that creates. Human relationships evolved around imperfect memories; introducing a memory system that never forgets creates a profound asymmetry. One participant would be relying on ordinary, fallible human memory. The other would be carrying a complete evidentiary history of the relationship, backed by an LLM capable of searching, comparing, and prosecuting every inconsistency.
Perfect retrieval is not perfect understanding. People change their minds, test ideas, speak imprecisely, joke, and respond to different contexts. LLMs can also hallucinate, misread context, and state questionable conclusions with unnerving confidence. That is why they remain tools rather than replacements for human judgment. I can conduct a smell test of anything an LLM regurgitates. Until an LLM can reliably do the same, it remains a really smart, really fast intern that still makes intern-level mistakes.
And that capability cannot be legislated away or penned up in some corporate patent stable. The technology will not remain confined to whatever boundaries governments or corporations draw around it. Once the cameras, microphones, radios, storage, and local models exist in a commodity device, technically capable users will repurpose them.
I was a CS undergrad when Phil Zimmermann gave the world PGP. It was just f'ing funny when the US government discovered that mathematics does not climb back into the box when ordered. Wearable AI will follow the same general pattern. The hardware may be harder to copy than software, but the capability will diffuse across the planet, the tools will improve, and LLM-assisted development will continue lowering the expertise required to stitch the pieces together.
I think Stanley Kubrick understood this before most of us had computers on our desks. The bone in 2001 was not merely a tool for obtaining dinner. Almost immediately, it became a weapon, a status amplifier, and a means of domination. The lesson was not that tools are evil; it was that any technology which extends human capability also extends human intention.
Perfect recall of every conversation is not merely a memory aid. It is immense social leverage. That leverage can be weaponized by bad actors or converted into a predatory business model by corporations. The question is not how we shove the technology back into the box, but how w
"As Engineers Consider Privacy Concerns"?! (Score:2)
Unfortunately, as has been proven over and over again, engineers don't consider privacy concerns... Management does. And what THEY consider is what the impact to revenue is. For every engineer who has qualms, there are a dozen in line waiting to step up for the bucks and reputation as the person who made it happen.