{"id":24024,"date":"2026-07-21T08:37:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T06:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/21\/metas-smartglasses-mean-any-child-can-be-covertly-filmed-in-the-age-of-ai-how-do-we-tackle-that-risk\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T08:37:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T06:37:17","slug":"metas-smartglasses-mean-any-child-can-be-covertly-filmed-in-the-age-of-ai-how-do-we-tackle-that-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/21\/metas-smartglasses-mean-any-child-can-be-covertly-filmed-in-the-age-of-ai-how-do-we-tackle-that-risk\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta\u2019s smartglasses mean any child can be covertly filmed. In the age of AI, how do we tackle that risk?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The company argues that it\u2019s for individuals to ensure they don\u2019t \u2018actively exploit\u2019 this technology. That won\u2019t keep children safe<\/p>\n

It took me a while to realise what the man sitting next to me on the train was doing. He was flicking through pictures of a little girl on his phone; zooming in on some, cropping the images. Hardly unusual, of course, except that on closer inspection the pictures were very clearly of the toddler sitting opposite us, playing with her parents. On a crowded train of people mostly staring obliviously at our own phones, a stranger had been covertly photographing that little girl over and over again. And if it hadn\u2019t been for that very visible phone screen giving him away, he wouldn\u2019t have been caught.<\/p>\n

That encounter was a while ago but my memory was jogged last week listening to a clip of Meta\u2019s VP of wearables, Alex Himel, talk fondly to the BBC about using his new smartglasses to film his daughter<\/a> singing in a talent contest. <\/strong>They let him capture the memory without having to watch her through a screen, he said, freeing him to be \u201ckind of living in the moment, head up and hands free\u201d. So far, so sweet. But what about the risk of creeps potentially using them to film other people\u2019s daughters covertly, heads up and hands free? Meta\u2019s smartglasses have a tiny flashing warning light on the frame to indicate when the wearer is recording, but the technology is still new enough that many people don\u2019t think to look for it. And in the age of AI, stolen images of children matter. Taken in real life or scraped from the internet<\/a>, they\u2019re the raw material for generating realistic-looking child abuse material of the most extreme and disturbing kind. (If that sounds like a grim but ultimately fairly victimless crime, the Internet Watch Foundation warned<\/a> in a recent report that AI-generated material risks fuelling sexual interest in children, normalising violence and increasing the risk of real-life offending.)<\/p>\n

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nThe company argues that it\u2019s for individuals to ensure they don\u2019t \u2018actively exploit\u2019 this technology. That won\u2019t keep children safe
\nIt took me a while to realise what the man sitting next to me on the train was doing. He was flicking through pictures of a little girl on his phone; zooming in on some, cropping the images. Hardly unusual, of course, except that on closer inspection the pictures were very clearly of the toddler sitting opposite us, playing with her parents. On a crowded train of people mostly staring obliviously at our own phones, a stranger had been covertly photographing that little girl over and over again. And if it hadn\u2019t been for that very visible phone screen giving him away, he wouldn\u2019t have been caught.
\nThat encounter was a while ago but my memory was jogged last week listening to a clip of Meta\u2019s VP of wearables, Alex Himel, talk fondly to the BBC about using his new smartglasses to film his daughter singing in a talent contest. They let him capture the memory without having to watch her through a screen, he said, freeing him to be \u201ckind of living in the moment, head up and hands free\u201d. So far, so sweet. But what about the risk of creeps potentially using them to film other people\u2019s daughters covertly, heads up and hands free? Meta\u2019s smartglasses have a tiny flashing warning light on the frame to indicate when the wearer is recording, but the technology is still new enough that many people don\u2019t think to look for it. And in the age of AI, stolen images of children matter. Taken in real life or scraped from the internet, they\u2019re the raw material for generating realistic-looking child abuse material of the most extreme and disturbing kind. (If that sounds like a grim but ultimately fairly victimless crime, the Internet Watch Foundation warned in a recent report that AI-generated material risks fuelling sexual interest in children, normalising violence and increasing the risk of real-life offending.)
\nGaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
\nDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The company argues that it\u2019s for individuals to ensure they don\u2019t \u2018actively exploit\u2019 this technology. That won\u2019t keep children safe It took me a while to realise what the man sitting next to me on the train was doing. He was flicking through pictures of a little girl on his phone; zooming in on some, …<\/p>\n

Meta\u2019s smartglasses mean any child can be covertly filmed. In the age of AI, how do we tackle that risk?<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":24025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24024"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}