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Privacy law experts have pointed to legal and privacy concerns in a pilot programme that @Meta has proposed to the Gujarat government to assist visually impaired citizens where Ray-Ban Meta glasses will be used. Meta is currently facing a major class-action privacy lawsuit in the US and international regulatory scrutiny in the UK and Kenya regarding its Ray-Ban AI smart glasses. The lawsuit focuses on deceptive marketing and consented sharing of sensitive user footage. A Meta spokesperson told @EconomicTimes, "Ray-Ban Meta glasses help you use AI, hands free, to answer questions about the world around you." "Photos and videos are private to users. Humans review AI content to improve product performance, for which we get clear user consent," the spokesperson said. Delhi-based advocate @apar1984, cofounder and director of digital rights advocacy group @internetfreedom Foundation told ET, "A visually impaired user wears these glasses through the whole of daily life, so the device captures their home, their routines, the people they meet and the documents they handle." Data captured so a blind user can read a medicine label should never flow into AI model training or advertising, he said. "Third party stores deserve particular scrutiny. By its own privacy policy, @BeMyEyes, an integration Meta has cited, records and stores video calls, photos and AI queries, which creates a separate repository of sensitive footage and a separate target for a breach," he explained. Be My Eyes software is integrated directly into Ray-Ban Meta model. Users can say, "Hey Meta, Be My Eyes" to instantly connect hands-free with the Be My Eyes volunteer network. Its privacy policy states that they record and store video calls, photos, and AI queries to enforce safety and improve their services. They offer data deletion requests. San Francisco-based @MikeBuckleySF, chief executive, @BeMyEyes, told ET, "Globally, more than one million blind or low-vision users have signed up to Be My Eyes, supported by over 10 million volunteers. We operate in more than 180 countries and support more than 180 languages." "This isn't our first work in India. We already see thousands of calls and many more AI-assisted sessions from India every year," he said. When a user launches Be My Eyes through the glasses, those three-minutes live video calls to volunteers -- made mostly to help find things -- are separate from the photos and videos that users take with the AI glasses when they're not on a live call, he explained. All data is processed and stored in the US. That is clearly disclosed to users and volunteers when they join the platform, and they consent to it, he said. "There's no way to guarantee that a camera in a pair of glasses won't occasionally capture background people or information," Buckley said. "We're not involved in evaluating data or annotating footage. We don't have teams of people sitting and reviewing user videos," he said. "We retain data indefinitely, primarily for safety reasons," he added. "A couple of times a year we receive abuse complaints, law enforcement requests or technical investigations related to older interactions. Retaining records helps us address those situations responsibly," he explained. Akshayy Nanda, partner, @SarafPartners, told ET that AI glasses move everywhere their wearer goes, through homes, offices, hospitals, streets and shops, and the people nearby have no idea that their faces, voices or even the documents on their desks might be captured and sent to a cloud server for processing. The government, working with Meta and deployment partners, should identify specific zones where recording should be restricted or prohibited altogether, such as hospitals, schools and voting areas, he said. m.economictimes.com/tech/artificia… @ETtech

New piece on deepfakes, personality rights, and what a right to digital identity might mean for India. [medium.com/p/who-owns-you…] #Deepfakes #TechPolicy #DigitalRights #SocialMedia #Personalityrights #ThePolicyLayer

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