The Light I Didn’t Know to Look For

How the design of smart glasses can help protect privacy

I went to an event during New York Fashion Week. I’m a creative, so being in a room with models, photographers, and people building their own brands was super exciting. I was curious how people there feel about the industry drifting toward AI-generated everything.

I talked to a lot of people that night. One conversation I recall was loose, funny, and a little unhinged in the best way. I joked about being "a techie" in a room full of very cool people. We talked about politics, identity, and what it's like to be a person of color. It was the kind of candid remarks you make with a stranger because it feels temporary and off the record (the kind of thing you’d say while waiting in a queue).

This person was a model, and they were wearing glasses. So was I. Mine are prescription, so I didn't think twice about theirs.

We exchanged Instagram handles. A few days later I followed them back and saw a story with the gradient ring and the Meta glasses label on it. My stomach dropped.

What I don't know

I want to be honest about the uncertainty, because it's the point of this piece. I don't know exactly what was captured. By the time I understood what I was looking at, the story had expired. I'm still piecing together what I said from memory.

I don't remember being asked whether I was okay being recorded or posted to a public account. There's no way for me to check what was on record. What did I say?

I would not have spoken the way I did if I'd known a camera was running. Not because I said anything I'm ashamed of, but because context matters. A joke between two people at a party is not the same thing as a clip on a public account.

"But there's a light"

The first thing people tell me is that the glasses have a recording indicator. They do. A white LED lights up whenever the glasses capture photos or video, meant to tell bystanders they're being filmed (Meta AI Glasses).

But picture the setting. A group conversation at a fashion event, surrounded by stage lighting, phone flashes, and ring lights. I was not scanning the frame of someone's glasses for a tiny dot before deciding how to talk. I assumed the mutual trust of a networking event.

These glasses are designed to be fashionable and unobtrusive. Is it on me for not noticing the light?

What if the light is covered, or gone?

The light has also become something people pay to remove. The stickers are available readily.

Meta has responded. An update shuts the camera off if the light is tampered with or destroyed, and applies to glasses that were already modified (Meta Glasses Privacy). In August, Meta closed another gap: people were starting a recording and then covering the light, so the camera now stops if the light is covered mid-recording.

That's real progress. It says a lot about how much weight one small LED was carrying. And even an intact, working light still has to be noticed.

Why so subtle?

Meta has explained its reasoning: it considers a blinking LED an appropriate warning, and says a shutter sound loud enough for bystanders to hear isn't practical for its glasses. I understand the tradeoff. A product worn all day can't be obnoxious. The wearer gets a seamless experience. The bystander gets a dot they have to already know about, already be looking for, and be able to see in whatever lighting they're in.

Recording in public isn't the new part. People have filmed street scenes for as long as cameras have existed. What's new is recording a private, face-to-face conversation with a device that looks exactly like the thing I wear to see. I would have wanted to know.

How I would design the recording mode

My starting principle: the person being recorded is also a user of this product. They should get signals designed for them, not leftovers from the wearer's experience. I'd change three layers.

1. The indicator itself. Instead of one small white dot on one corner, the whole front frame carries a thin light band that's visible from the side and in a crowd. White blends into artificial lighting, so the band uses a distinct, reserved color that means one thing only. Brightness should adapt to ambient light so it holds up under stage lights and daylight. Capturing, livestreaming, and a covered or tampered light each look different.

2. A signal that doesn't rely on eyesight. Phones already warn you when an unknown tracker is traveling with you. The same idea applies here: when glasses record a conversation nearby, phones in close range get a short, anonymous "recording nearby" notice, with an easy way to ask the wearer to stop or exclude you.

3. A pause before posting. Capturing a memory and publishing someone’s face and voice to a public account are different acts. Before a clip with identifiable people goes public, the app asks the wearer to confirm those people agreed, and blurs faces and mutes voices for anyone who hasn’t.

None of this is exotic. Tracker alerts, face blurring, and permission prompts already exist in products we use every day. What's missing is the decision to point them at the person on the other side of the lens.

Where I've landed

I'm not writing this to call anyone out. I genuinely don't know what happened in that moment, and the person I met may have done nothing wrong by their own standards. What I know is that I walked into a room assuming a shared understanding of what "off the record" meant.

When the recorder looks like an ordinary pair of glasses, consent can't rest on a signal most people don't know to look for. The design has to do more of that work.

The Light I Didn’t Know to Look For was originally published in Bootcamp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.