How to Stop Meta Training AI on Your Smart Glasses' Visual Data
Meta's new privacy setting determines whether company workers can review photos and videos captured by your smart glasses.
New Privacy Setting Rollout
Meta has begun implementing a new privacy option for users of its smart glasses, enabling them to prevent the company from utilizing "visual data" collected by the device for AI model training. This setting is now accessible within the Meta AI application.
The company is notifying smart glasses owners about this update via a pop-up in the Meta AI app. The notification states, "Your AI glasses can translate a menu, identify a plant and more. You can opt out of providing visual data from these experiences to Meta for product improvement. If you opt out, that data isn't stored after processing."
How to Adjust Your Privacy Settings
While the notification guides users to the relevant settings page, you can also locate it manually. Navigate to your glasses' settings, select "Meta AI," and then scroll down to "store visual data from AI experiences." Your glasses must be out of their case and connected to your phone to modify this setting. If you own multiple pairs of glasses, this process must be repeated for each device.
Potential Feature Limitations
Meta indicates that opting out may restrict the functionality of certain features on the glasses. An example provided is "visual reminders," where you might look at an item and ask Meta AI to remind you to purchase it later. It remains unclear which other features might be impacted by this choice.
Meta's Data Usage Policy
Alongside the new setting, Meta has released a more comprehensive explanation of its "visual data" usage in a help center article, explicitly mentioning the possibility of human review. The company clarifies, "When you use AI experiences on your Meta glasses – like asking about something you're looking at or using live AI – Meta stores the resulting visual data and may use it to power glasses features and improve Meta products. This includes the process of training and improving AI models, which may be automated or manual (human)."
Meta further notes that it only retains "visual data" collected during the use of specific AI features, such as Live AI. The company specifies that this visual data does not encompass "photos and videos you capture with your glasses when the capture LED is on."
