The Invisible Observer
Personal technology is turning its senses outward. When my glasses observe others, the question is not only privacy, but who is really present.
I own a pair of Meta glasses with a camera. I am glad I do.
They let me take photos and video in a way I could not before. The camera points in the same direction as my gaze. I do not first have to find my phone, hold it up between myself and the world, and watch the moment through a screen. That is a genuine human benefit.
This is why I find it hard to recognise myself in the most unequivocal criticism of AI glasses. When they are described only as surveillance glasses or violation glasses, the human benefit disappears. The camera is not merely a tool for secretly filming other people. It is also a new way to see, remember and share the world.
But the camera is not pointing at me.
It is pointing at everyone else.
This is where something important changes. We have grown used to personal technology that gets to know its owner. The phone tracks my location. The watch measures my body. The computer learns my habits, and the assistant reads my messages. I may worry about the collection, but the relationship is at least recognisable: I choose the product, receive the benefit and give up data about myself.
When technology moves onto the face and acquires eyes and ears, it turns outward. Other people now become part of the product’s input. They did not buy the glasses, accept the terms or receive the convenience they make possible.
I may be willing to let my smartphone track me. But am I also willing to let my neighbour’s smartphone track me?
The Glasses Without a Camera
Meta has just introduced Ray-Ban Meta Audio, a new version of the company’s AI glasses without a camera. It looks like a direct response to criticism of the camera-equipped version. No lens, no hidden video.
Yet the question does not disappear. The glasses still have microphones and can record sound. According to Reuters, they give people around the wearer no clear signal when that happens. The camera version flashes a light while recording. The new model collects fewer kinds of sensory input and may at the same time be more covert.
This shows that the conflict is not only about the camera. It is about whether people can read the situation they are in.
We cannot decide which people we meet out in the world. A stranger is allowed to stand next to us on the train and hear part of our conversation. A guest at the next table can see who we are with. We have never controlled every pair of eyes and ears we pass.
But normally we can see them.
We can lower our voices when someone comes closer. We can wait with a confidential sentence until the waiter has gone. We can choose another subject when a child enters the room. Visible presence does not give us control over other people, but it gives us a chance to understand the social situation and act within it.
AI glasses introduce a new ambiguity. I can see the person in front of me, but not necessarily all the systems that see and listen through that person’s equipment. The conversation looks like a conversation between two people. Technically, a third party may be present.
It is like speaking to someone who has secretly put another person on the line. The problem is not that a third person must never be allowed to hear the conversation. The problem is that the situation presents itself as something other than what it is.
The Visible Tower
The French philosopher Michel Foucault used Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon as an image of modern surveillance. The building was conceived as a circular prison with a watchtower in the centre. From the tower, a guard could see the prisoners in their cells. The prisoners could see the tower, but they could not tell whether the guard was actually watching them.
What mattered, then, was not that everyone was watched all the time. What mattered was that they knew it could happen. As Foucault put it, power was to be visible but unverifiable. The tower was visible. The gaze was hidden.
The uncertainty moved power inside the person being watched. When the prisoner could never know whether the guard was looking, he had to behave as though this were always the case.
A pair of AI glasses is obviously not a prison, and a person with a camera is not a prison guard. Foucault’s point concerned institutional power, discipline and people who could not leave the situation. That difference must not be smoothed away to make the metaphor more dramatic.
But the panopticon demonstrates the importance of visibility. The prisoner could see the tower. At least he knew the condition: I can be observed from here.
With wearable technology, the tower itself can become invisible. The microphone looks like an ordinary pair of glasses. The camera can move into a spectacle frame or a pair of earphones. The AI interpreting the sensory input has no physical form at all for us to read.
Foucault described an invisible gaze from a visible observation post. We are building the invisible observation post.
This does not necessarily produce the same self-discipline. On the contrary, we may carry on quite naturally because we do not know that another form of observation is present. We do not lose freedom because we feel watched. We lose the opportunity to choose our behaviour because the situation is hidden from us.
From Self-Tracking to Tracking the Surroundings
Privacy in consumer technology has long been treated as an agreement between the user and the product. What data does my phone collect? How long does the company store it? Can I turn the function off? Did I agree?
Those questions are still necessary. But they are no longer sufficient.
When a product senses outward, the owner’s choice becomes a condition for everyone around the owner. I can allow my device to listen, but the words in the room do not belong only to me. I can allow my AI to remember my life, but other people appear in my memories. I can agree to the analysis of my photos, but the faces in them have not necessarily agreed to the same thing.
My privacy choice no longer stops with me. My convenience is made possible by data about people who are not themselves users.
It does not stop with glasses. New AI features for the Apple Watch have been described as a way to summarise conversations and retrieve their most recent seconds. Other small recorders can already transcribe meetings and build a personal memory for the wearer. Each function can be useful. Together, they point towards a world in which the personal computer not only knows its owner. It also gets to know everyone the owner meets.
In When the Interface Became Optional, I wrote about technology receding into the background because AI can translate our intentions directly into action. That is often progress. We no longer have to arrange our work around the machine’s buttons and forms.
But when the interface disappears, some of the signs that tell the surroundings what the machine is doing disappear as well. A phone held up in front of the face is clumsy, but socially legible. You can see that a picture is being taken. Glasses can provide the same function without the interruption — and without the sign.
For the user, it is frictionless. For the other person, it is opaque.
An Interface for Those Who Did Not Buy the Product
The solution cannot be for every sensor always to interrupt everyone nearby and ask for consent. That would make everyday life impossible, and we do not demand permission for every photograph, every human glance or every conversation someone might overhear.
Nor is there one signal that solves the problem. A small light can be missed, covered or misunderstood. A sound may be disruptive and does not necessarily tell us whether the recording is stored, analysed locally or sent elsewhere. A symbol can create false reassurance if nobody knows what it means.
But inadequate signals are not an argument for no signals.
We need a social interface for the people who do not own the product. Not necessarily a screen or a warning, but a clear and shared language for when technology senses, records, remembers and shares. It must make the additional presence legible without destroying the convenience that makes the technology valuable.
This is not only about privacy in the legal sense. It is about a meeting being truthful.
When two people speak, they should be able to know whether they really are two. If a machine listens, interprets the conversation and may act on it later, it occupies a social position even if it is not a conscious being. It is in the room.
In When Stories Grew Hands, I wrote about AI systems that do not merely describe the world but begin to act in it. Here, the same movement arrives from the other direction. Before the machine can act on our surroundings, it must sense them. The question of who is present therefore becomes larger than the question of who is wearing the product.
I do not want to get rid of my Meta glasses. I want to be able to take photos and video in a way I could not before. Technology may become smaller, lighter and more integrated into our lives.
But its convenience should not depend on other people misunderstanding the situation they are in.
Invisible technology can be progress. The invisible observer is something else.
Sources and Further Reading
- Politiken/Ritzau: After heavy criticism: Meta launches glasses without a camera, 24 September 2026.
- Michel Foucault: Panopticism, an excerpt from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.
- Computerworld: Apple Watch gets questionable AI features: Would you talk confidentially with someone if their watch was listening?, 10 September 2026.
- When the Interface Became Optional — on technology becoming less visible to the user.
- When Stories Grew Hands — on AI systems moving from interpretation to action.