Article by Christina Vaughan, 8th October 2026
Imagine sitting in a café, chatting to someone wearing glasses. There is no phone held up between you, no camera pointed conspicuously in your direction. You assume you are having a conversation. Would it occur to you that you might also be becoming somebody else’s content?
Or imagine sitting on the Tube on your way to a party. A stranger appears to be staring at you through their glasses. Are they simply looking in your direction, or are they filming? You cannot tell. You are left weighing your discomfort against the possibility that you have misread the situation.
This is what troubles me about Meta’s smart glasses, especially as a woman who has already been subjected to intrusive and aggressive filming by mobile phone on public transport. They bring the ability to photograph and film into something we are accustomed to treating as an ordinary part of someone’s appearance. The person wearing them knows what the device is doing. The person opposite may have no idea.
I have spent more than 30 years working in the business of images. I love their power to tell stories, challenge assumptions and help us understand one another.
I also know how much can change when an image leaves the moment in which it was made.
A conversation can become a clip. A stranger can become a subject. An ordinary encounter can acquire a caption, an audience and a meaning its participants never intended.
What about the people inside the picture?
At Cultura Creative, we pay the people who participate in our productions and obtain releases covering the agreed uses of their images. Consent is part of the work. There is a person behind every face, with a life beyond the frame.
Professional production and photography in public operate in different circumstances. I am not suggesting that every person who appears incidentally in a street photograph must sign a model release. Nor do I want to undermine journalism or the ability to document wrongdoing.
Consent in professional image-making also involves boundaries around use. Permissions and licensing terms make clear what is allowed and what is prohibited, including protections against defamatory or pornographic uses. The precise wording matters: signing a release should never be treated as a licence to do anything with someone’s image.
But, that brings me to a serious ethical question: how much control should someone else’s technology give them over our image?
We have already become accustomed to cameras in our pockets. A phone can certainly be used discreetly or abusively. Yet lifting a phone to film often provides a social signal: something has changed, and people have a chance to notice, ask a question or object. A camera built into glasses can make that change much harder to recognise.
The convenience belongs to the wearer. The uncertainty is shared by everyone around them.
Why independence matters
There is an important reason to take these devices seriously, and it deserves more than a passing acknowledgement.
I recently connected with the influencer, Tess Daly who told me how much she had enjoyed using them and what a difference they had made to her and many disabled people allowing them so much more independence when filming their own content. She was also aware of people’s concerns. Our exchange brought home to me why this debate needs room for both the benefits and the risks.
For people living with disabilities, hands-free technology can make a substantial difference. Meta’s glasses can also connect blind and partially sighted users to Be My Eyes volunteers, who can see the view from the glasses and help with everyday tasks. Features that describe surroundings or allow voice-controlled calls and messages can also support greater independence.
That is a benefit I greatly welcome. Our work with people living with disabilities reinforces my belief that they should help shape this debate, particularly when restrictions might affect tools they rely on.
Accessibility should be central to responsible innovation. So should the experience of the people who encounter that innovation without choosing to use it themselves. We need to ask how these interests can be protected together.
Who carries the risk?
As a woman, I find the potential for intrusive and sexualised filming particularly disturbing, against the wider backdrop of violence and abuse towards women.
The Crime Survey for England and Wales estimated that 12.8% of women aged 16 and over experienced domestic abuse, sexual assault or stalking in the year ending March 2025. That is roughly one in eight women in a single year. The figure does not encompass every experience of unwanted attention, sexual harassment or fear for personal safety. It does, however, help explain why concerns about intrusive recording cannot be just dismissed as excessive caution. Whilst, these figures do not establish a link with smart glasses; they describe the context into which this technology arrives.
I think about a young woman on a train, someone exercising at a gym, a teenager talking to a stranger, children swimming at an outdoor lido or waiting for a parent to collect them from school. The prospect of being filmed discreetly, then shared and judged online, or worse, can change how safe an ordinary interaction feels.
This concern is already affecting how the products are received. On 2 October 2026, Dutch eyewear chain Hans Anders suspended sales of Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses in the Netherlands and Belgium amid privacy concerns.
Meta points to safeguards, including an outward-facing light that signals photo or video capture. Those measures matter and should be scrutinised fairly. But a light only helps if someone notices it and understands what it means.
Even then, knowing that recording is happening does not mean you have agreed to it. Nor does it tell you where the footage might go.
Consent to a conversation is not consent to its publication. And the consequences of publication are not evenly shared. The person uploading a clip may gain attention; the person pictured may inherit unwanted exposure, ridicule or sexualised commentary.
What if only women could buy them?
My first, admittedly provocative, thought was: what if only women were allowed to buy these glasses?
I am not proposing this as a policy. Women can misuse cameras too. Men with disabilities need access to assistive technology. Restricting purchasers by gender would neither solve the problem nor provide a fair answer.
But the thought made me examine my own reaction. Why did changing the imagined wearer change how threatening the device felt?
For me, it reflected the calculations many women already make about unwanted attention and personal safety: choosing a route home, keeping door or car keys ready in one’s hands, sharing a journey with a friend, deciding whether challenging a stranger might make things worse.
We also know how readily a woman’s appearance becomes a subject for public judgement. The recent response to Marie-France van Heel, Andy Burnham’s wife, and her choice of dress is a case in point: commentary focused on the fit of her dress and her body rather than her joy of the occasion. That is a different issue from covert filming, but it illustrates how quickly a woman’s image can become an invitation for others to appraise and demean her.
A discreet camera adds another uncertainty. Am I being watched, or recorded? If I object, will that confrontation become content too?
A product may be sold to everyone, but that does not mean everyone experiences its risks in the same way. Manufacturers should take those differences seriously when designing their products and safeguards.
Should responsibility be built in?
I would like to see companies developing wearable cameras take responsibility for foreseeable misuse.
Clear recording signals should be readily understood by the public, and safeguards against concealing them should withstand independent scrutiny. Sensitive spaces need clear policies, developed with accessibility needs in mind.
People subjected to abusive filming also need effective ways to report content and seek its removal. A person who did not choose to be filmed should not face a maze of processes while the footage continues to circulate.
There are further questions about where recordings go, how they are processed and who can access them. Controls offered to the device owner do not automatically give the people in the picture any meaningful choice.
Women’s safety organisations, disabled users, privacy specialists and people affected by harassment should all help shape these products. Their experience belongs in the design process, alongside the enthusiasm of those who want to buy them.
Whose choice?
I am enthusiastic about technology that expands what people can do. My business works with AI, and I see enormous possibilities in it. That makes it more important to ask difficult questions while products and expectations are still being shaped.
We should be able to support a disabled person’s independence and expect safeguards against intrusive filming. We should be able to enjoy taking photographs and recognise that the people in them have interests of their own.
The person buying smart glasses makes a choice. The company bringing them to market makes a choice. The person sitting opposite deserves consideration too.
Return to that conversation in the café, or that journey on the Tube. One person knows whether the camera is on. The other may be left guessing.
Your glasses may belong to you. The person in the picture still deserves a say.
Christina Vaughan
Founder & CEO, Cultura Creative
8th October