Imagine leaving your house and never knowing if the person next to you at a bar - or just walking by - is secretly recording you. Sounds like a Black Mirror episode, but welcome to 2024, where wearable tech is here to track your steps, ping your notifications, and also make you question your sanity. Meta's AI glasses, launched a few years ago, have been raising serious privacy concerns, and for good reason.

Current models have a somewhat conspicuous camera lens and an LED light that's supposed to alert people they're being recorded. But as CNN reported, none of the women they spoke to saw that light during interactions. One woman told the BBC a man recorded her and then demanded money to remove the videos; another described being recorded during sexual encounters without consent. This digital sexual abuse is becoming frighteningly normal, with male influencers building massive followings by posting unsolicited recordings.

Meta claims they're on it: "Our glasses have an LED light that activates whenever someone captures content, so it’s clear to others that the device is recording and features tamper detection technology to prevent people from covering that light," the company told CNN. But creators are already teaching viewers how to bypass the safeguard, and Meta has had to update the glasses to prevent this.

Then there's the surveillance state angle. According to a Wired analysis, Meta quietly embedded face-recognition technology - dubbed "NameTag" - into its AI app. It identifies people captured by the glasses' camera and can alert the wearer when it recognizes someone, encoding faces into biometric data. Imagine what a stalker or the government could do with that.

Enter Kylie Jenner, the latest celebrity to push Meta's smart glasses, even as women worldwide complain about how they're being used to harass them. Because nothing says "we care about your privacy" like a billionaire influencer hawking surveillance devices. Past over your webcam and turn off Siri all you want - tech companies are stretching their tentacles into every aspect of our lives, and the more these systems are normalized by influencers and celebrities, the less we view them as creepy. Today it's misogynistic YouTube videos; tomorrow, who knows?