New apps try to detect Meta AI glasses nearby, but results vary

In short: As Meta AI smart glasses become more common, hobbyist developers are releasing phone apps that try to spot them nearby, but the apps have clear limits.

What's going on

Meta’s Ray-Ban Meta and other smart glasses are showing up more often in public. That has led some places, including schools, courts, restaurants, and events, to ban them because they can record video without being obvious.

Privacy advocates say Meta’s main built-in signal, a small recording light, is easy to cover. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has also warned that future features, such as facial recognition (software that matches a face to an identity, like an automatic name lookup), could increase the risk of misuse.

In response, developers have started building “detector” apps. These apps usually look for the glasses’ Bluetooth signal (the short-range wireless link used to connect the glasses to a phone). That is like noticing a device is “shouting its name” quietly over the air. The apps can alert you that compatible glasses may be nearby, but they cannot tell whether the person is actually recording.

Ars Technica highlighted a newer iPhone app called Zuckoff, which is free to download and offers an optional paid feature for continuous scanning. Other examples include Nearby Glasses, which costs $2.99, and Antizuck Smart Glasses Scanner, which costs about $3. Developers warn about false alarms and missed detections, especially when walls or people block the signal.

What to watch

If Meta and other companies make smart glasses look more like regular eyewear, it may get harder to spot them by sight. Watch for more venue bans, stronger privacy laws, and technical rules that would make recording easier to detect, such as requiring a special Bluetooth signal only when recording.

Source: Arstechnica