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Billed as a wearable device to optimise physical performance, the Oakley Meta smart glasses may just be a catalyst for 24-7 surveillance and targeted advertising on an unprecedented level.
Meta loves itself a hefty privacy scandal, and this could be another in the making.
By now you’ve probably seen ads featuring Kylian Mbappe and Patrik Mahomes for the Oakley Meta ‘Performance AI glasses’. Taking a colossal dump on the second-gen Ray-Ban Meta frames that rolled out in 2023, this wearable’s specs have been upgraded across the board.
We’re talking an ultra-wide 12MO camera capable of 3K footage, a lens and LED privacy light, POV video calling, livestreaming, and voice-activated query solving abilities. You could ask it, for instance, details about the wind direction and speed before shanking your golf shot miles wide anyway.
Single use battery life is reportedly eight hours, while standby mode would achieve 19 hours before requiring charging. The regular and premium models will drop this month for $399 and $499 respectively, complete with Meta AI capable of analysing and describing what the camera is seeing.
The marketing spiel pushes the smart glasses as performance enhancers, showing active folk skating, hooping, sky diving, and various other activities while utilising live contextual information and other neat features.
At face value, you may see the device as the natural progression of consumer technology and the culmination of a recent boom in biohacking. However, those of us more sceptical – and let’s face it, Meta has given us ample reason to be – are more interested in the company’s grander motivations beyond making a few dollars in an emerging market.
When it comes to privacy scandals, Meta has a rap sheet longer than Pablo Escobar in narcotics. Since the humdinger of Cambridge Analytica in 2018, Zuckerberg and co, undeterred, have been in and out of court regularly for offences related to dodgy data gathering and targeted ads.
