Turning Meta's smart glasses into a privacy nightmare took no time at all

The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are impressive tech that allows a user to livestream and use Meta’s AI. However, it’s not necessarily the tech that’s its best feature; rather, it’s the fact that the smart glasses actually look like a normal pair of sunglasses. As a result, it looks like a product you’d see anyone wear as they go about their day. With this technology becoming so discreet, it creates a certain problem that two college students have recently highlighted in a new demo.

A pair of Harvard students, AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio, have teamed up to create what they call I-XRAY. Designed to raise awareness of the scary potential of smart glasses, I-XRAY is capable of recognizing faces and connecting them to data points such as names, phone numbers, home addresses, and family members.

The way the app works is by using the product’s ability to livestream to Instagram. A computer program then monitors the stream and uses AI to identify the face. The photos are later used to scrub through public databases to find relevant personal information. That information is then sent to the app for the user to peruse through.

First spotted by 404 Media, the duo posted a video of them hitting the streets and using the technology successfully on classmates. What’s even more frightening is that the app also seemed to work just fine on complete strangers as well.

I-XRAY isn’t necessarily new as facial recognition technology has existed for years. In fact, concerns about facial recognition software have been floating around for a while due to issues with privacy, part of the reason Google Glass failed. However, the tech being put into a widely available consumer product like this is new. And given that the Ray-Ban Meta looks like normal sunglasses, most people likely would not realize they are being recorded.

On Nguyen and Ardayfio’s part, they are not releasing this app to the public. As they explain in a document about the project, “The purpose of building this tool is not for misuse, and we are not releasing it.” The goal is “raising awareness that extracting someone’s home address and other personal details from just their face on the street is possible today.”