AI glasses have a problem. It's impossible for anyone to wear them without the rest of the world thinking they're a pervert. While recently testing a pair of AI glasses, our own reviews editor said he couldn't avoid feeling like a creep – and those glasses didn't even have a camera.
Meta Glasses do have a camera, allowing wearers to take pictures or record videos using voice commands or by pressing a button on the frames. Meta, which also owns Facebook and Instagram, is reportedly also planning to develop glasses that take photos every few seconds with no warning light.
To launch its first range that's not co-branded with Ray-Ban or Oakley, the company has hooked up with Kylie Jenner to try to make the product look more palatable, and less pervy. The Kardashian sister has "co-designed" one of the models, which also has the option of her voice for the AI assistant.
But you know a product's in trouble when a bus stop ad modified by a guerrilla art collective feels more true and engaging than the original.
Subvertising, or billboard hacking, has a rich history, from the Billboard Liberation Front (BLF) in San Francisco and BUGA UP's actions against tobacco advertising in Australia in the late '70s to the Adbusters Media Foundation's institutionalition of the art form in the '90s. Techniques typically involve stencils and cut-and-paste collage, but the Kylie Jenner Meta Glasses subvert takes things up a level in its sophistication.
As shown in the Instagram post above, the original billboard in London appears to have been modified with a lenticular overlay. This creates an optical illusion that turns Kylie into a skull-faced alien and reveals the message 'We're Always Watching You' when viewed from a particular angle.
The installation is the work of the activist art group Everyone Hates Elon, which has previously delighted commuters with its anti-Tesla adverts. The concept and the imagery in the latest piece is a reference John Carpenter’s 1988 sci-fi horror They Live (the movie involves a pair of sunglasses that reveal subliminal messages in billboards and aliens posing as humans).
The detournement works so well because it feels more honest than the original message.
Amid concerns that AI glasses can be used to film people without their consent, including for sexual exploitation, it's a story that resounds more than the dubious premise that Kylie can make AI glasses look normal. Wired reported last month that Meta had added although not activated a facial recognition system to the glasses’ software, raising even more privacy concerns.
We've gone from fears of the surveillance state to the prospect of a state of surveillants. And behind it all is a company whose original business was built on its ability to watch us online.
“Meta has spent years tracking us online,” Everyone Hates Elon told Hyperallergic. “Now it wants to track us in the real world too.”
