In February 2026, Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) and Goteborgs-Posten (GP) published an investigative report that revealed disturbing facts about the practices underpinning what is being called the “next Big Tech revolution.” Data workers in Kenya employed by a company called Sama, a subcontractor of Meta, anonymously shared how they were exposed to deeply private video clips from people using Meta’s hyped AI smart glasses, which recorded everything from bathroom visits and intimate moments between partners to bank card details. As legal responses to the revelations emerged, Meta terminated its contract with Sama for “not meeting its standards.” One of the petitioners in the continuing legal action against the case, Naftali Wambalo, told BBC that the said “standards” were likely “standards of secrecy,” rather than parameters pertaining to privacy and accountability. Wambalo added that Meta did not want workers speaking out about the content they had to review during data annotation and labelling process.The development follows an unfortunately recurring pattern of ‘Big Tech’ companies quietly building their ‘exciting’ AI-powered products by exploiting the labour and pain of underprivileged workers in Africa, Asia and South America. Workers are being made to wear cameras on their heads to record themselves for AI datasets. Dismal political and economic conditions perpetuate such ‘work,’ which involves performing a variety of hand movements like folding and lifting for robots to replicate, essentially training automated machines that are guaranteed to replace them once fully trained. Some agree because the state of the job market leaves them with little choice, while others participate to simply earn more money by recording mundane tasks like household chores. The exploitative power dynamics, furthered by either desperation or ignorance on part of the workers, contributing to these systems therefore persist. In context of the Meta smart glasses controversy, workers pointed out that the users were probably not even aware of being watched, another common feature of Big Tech’s global digital surveillance infrastructure.Smart glasses did not have the best of debuts when they were first released by Google a decade ago; Google Glasses (un)fortunately failed society’s aesthetic and moral sense. Since then, Meta has apparently solved this issue by partnering with brands like Ray-Ban and Oakley to ensure their glasses feel like a normal pair first and a sophisticated AI gadget second. However, this clever play of aesthetics and branding must not distract us from the problematic nature of this technology.As other companies like Google, Samsung and Apple plan to roll out their own versions in this space, questions surrounding morality and accountability need to be at the forefront of this discourse.Cognitive liberty, AI and the real worldThe advent of AI-powered glasses raises a host of critical challenges to established understandings of concepts such as privacy and consent, especially as heavy AI chatbot usage is already having documented cognitive impacts on users. Classical ideas of privacy may not be capable of addressing what could be inscribed ‘into’ a person’s deeper self – behavioural changes, the capacity to reason, attentional patterns – all without consent or knowledge. The level of immersion promised by AI smart glasses (as compared to AI chatbots) is thus concerning. Unlike chatbots, which are generally limited to screens, glasses may serve as a bridge influencing the user’s reality itself. There is a high possibility that the only time when people disconnect themselves from these glasses may be when they go to sleep. Persistent contact with AI can blur lines of reasoning and the capacity to make thoughtful, intentional decisions. To protect human cognition, we need to recognise that the brain, in itself, is a private space with its own rights. The basic definition of ‘cognitive liberty,’ according to legal scholar Nita A. Farahany, consists of three points: “Right to self-determination over our brain and mental experiences, right to access information and right to change our brains if we choose — whether that’s to enhance them or diminish them, to have a glass of wine or decide to go to law school.” Cognitive harm may occur over a period of time and can be directly or indirectly designed. A study published in Frontiers in Psychology demonstrated how constant suggestions and feedback-giving wearable devices like smart watches can create pressure to optimise every aspect of life. For example, getting a poor ‘sleep score’ may undermine subjective feelings of rest. This concern sharpens when multimodal AI systems powering these glasses are taken into account, systems which can be understood as what researchers term “Persuasive Technology,” instead of mere ‘assistants.’ By acquiring the user’s data, persuasive technology has the capability to induce thoughts and shape decisions and behaviours. By utilising cameras and microphones, it can perceive the user’s immediate surroundings, making it a ‘seeing’ AI that can track voices, capture videos, trace locations and record moment-to-moment interactions with people and objects.As described by technology scholar Daniel Susser, adaptive choice architectures can subtly guide individuals towards certain ends in a way that can be defined as ‘transparent,’ which means that users cannot identify the existence of a ‘hypernudge.’ In other words, if people become used to these AI-embedded ‘normal-lookalike’ glasses, they will no longer look at them, but through them. This “seamless blending” of AI is what makes it invisible and this invisibility, in turn, is what puts cognitive liberty in danger. AI, misogyny and surveillance in the Indian contextIn a country like India that is already grappling with social fault lines, class, caste, race, gender, religion and so on, a technology like AI-smart glasses is likely to have significant detrimental impacts on everyday life. India’s regulatory record across critical sectors, from climate policy to the education system, offers little reassurance that meaningful and strict regulation will arrive in time. Over the past few decades, access to cheaply-available internet in India has expanded without a proper society-level analysis of the consequences of such access, even as the country has become the second largest smartphone-using nation in the world after China. Digital illiteracy, misinformation and fake news are rampant. Young men are being increasingly drawn towards the ‘manosphere,’ an online ecosystem rooted in violent misogyny and toxic masculinity. Most disturbingly, a recent three-month long investigation by Decode and Tattle revealed an entire supply chain of AI-powered tools to digitally undress women, that included applications, bots, payment networks as well as digital platforms that acted as hosts. AI deepfakes and morphed images of women regularly float across social media timelines. Men record and capture scenes of sexual violence against women and circulate such content for their pleasure. This is the grave reality that uncritical celebration of market logic hides. For such persons, therefore, “competitively-priced” AI smart glasses may be the greatest tool to enable stalking, recording and harassment. Globally, reports of abuse are already emerging. A detailed investigation by the BBC in January 2026 revealed how dozens of male influencers were secretly filming women using smart glasses and posting clips on Instagram and TikTok. In another case, a woman was recorded without her consent and asked to pay to get the videos removed. The illusion of innovationIndia’s recent policy documents on AI prioritise “responsible innovation” over “cautionary restraint,” trusting companies to essentially self-regulate, while waiting for “real and present” harm to happen before taking action. Unfortunately, the track record of most Big Tech companies in taking accountability for the harm they caused does not provide a strong case for trusting them in any way. Despite Meta’s claims that the recording indicator light on the glasses is intended to prevent abuse, methods to disable the light are easily available. Worse, according to a New York Times report, Meta was hoping to add a facial recognition component to the glasses during a “dynamic political environment” when detractors would be busy focusing on other issues and the potential for backlash would be low. As of June 5, facial recognition code that had been quietly pushed to the Meta AI app has been removed after it was discovered and reported by Wired. However, the company still appears interested in facial recognition technology and is exploring partnerships with law enforcement and military agencies. The prospect of facial recognition in AI glasses is particularly troubling as it may make public surveillance a routine, everyday practice. Hence, critical questions must be asked about why there seems to be so little resistance or public awareness about the dangers of this new technology, particularly in India, as several companies prepare to launch their own products. We must be critical of market-oriented logic. Do technologies like these need to be sold as mass market consumer products in the first place? Do they actively solve a particular consumer need or is the need fictitious? If there is an argument to be made about these technologies being useful for people with disabilities, it needs to be at the centre of the conversation. Accessibility should not be a “happy accident” of an otherwise problematic technology and the potential benefits must not be used to justify surveillance and privacy violations. Thus, if such products have to exist, we must question every single facet of their design, since Big Tech’s vision of smart glasses need not be the only one. For example, there are companies that are making privacy-friendly smart glasses with open-source technology. Some of these companies deliberately avoid using a camera, believing it to be fundamentally irresponsible. Others include only a very low-resolution camera with no data sent outside the device. Yet none of these are principles that Big Tech companies follow, unless there is sustained resistance and outrage. In case there has to be a market for such products, it must be heavily regulated. We must learn to see through misleading marketing strategies that present harmful devices as aspirational or desirable lifestyle choices. We must reject technologies that empower the worst elements of the society. Fundamentally, we must rethink the trust we place in companies that actively lobby against regulation and consistently evade accountability for the harms their products cause. As the Google example illustrates, it is indeed possible to successfully resist ‘trending’ Big Tech releases, no matter how difficult it may seem. Alongside, resisting everyday surveillance technologies, we must continue to push for alternative, socially-beneficial visions of progress, free from Big Tech’s exploitative influence. Kaif Siddiqui is a Research Fellow and Doctoral Scholar at the NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. Ramsha Sartaj is a law graduate from Aligarh Muslim University.