Meta headquarters, Menlo Park, California
SAN FRANCISCO — Class action lawsuits are uploading into federal court against Facebook- and Instagram-parent company Meta and eyewear maker Luxottica and other companies associated with the development of Meta AI Glasses, accusing the companies of allegedly violating federal and California laws by allegedly surreptitiously recording users' surroundings and then using that information to train Meta's A.I. programs.
Since early March, more than a dozen class actions have been filed in San Francisco federal court, demanding Meta and its co-defendants pay potentially massive sums over the alleged violations.
The lawsuits all take aim at the defendants over the same allegations: That Meta and its partners allegedly misled people using Meta AI Glasses into believing their use of the product would remain private.
Meta has partnered with the maker of popular eyeglass brands Oakley and Ray-Ban on their AI Glasses.
Meta advertises the glasses as providing users with "effortless connection" to the online world, allowing users to make and receive calls and send messages, or listen to music without external speakers or earphones, engage with augmented reality, ask AI questions and recommendations, receive instant language translations, and capture high quality photos and videos, all hands free.
According to the complaints, Meta has particularly played up the alleged privacy benefits of its AI Glasses products.
In reality, the lawsuits assert, Meta and its partners were allegedly recording everything the users saw, heard and said while wearing the glasses, and then used the video and audio recordings to help train Meta artificial intelligence programs, as well as other uses to boost the company's profitability.
The complaints assert those alleged practices amounted to invasions of privacy.
They noted, for instance, that recordings were also "routinely routed to human reviewers for manual inspection."
According to the complaints, so-called whistleblower contractors who had been hired by Meta to review the recordings allegedly said: "“We see everything—from living rooms to naked bodies. Meta has that type of content in its databases. People can record themselves in the wrong way and not even know what they are recording.”
Other recordings allegedly contained "highly sensitive identifying information, including bank cards, personal paperwork, and private documents inadvertently captured by the glasses' cameras."
Some of the complaints have also noted that Meta could allegedly use the information gleaned from the alleged illicit recordings to increase its ability to boost advertising revenue.
The complaints assert that all of the alleged actions fly in the face of Meta's marketing of the products, which allegedly led users to believe the glasses would not be used to essentially record their lives and share the information without their knowledge or consent.
"The result is that American consumers continue to be deceived by Defendants into purchasing Meta AI Glasses with the mistaken belief that they have control over the data Meta AI Glasses collect and that their privacy is being protected when they use Meta AI Glasses, when in fact their privacy is being violated and they do not have control over how Defendants use and share their sensitive data," one of the lawsuits said.
The lawsuits all seek to expand the action to include everyone in the U.S. who purchased used Meta AI Glasses.
Meta and its co-defendants have not yet responded to the lawsuits in court.
However, in an emailed statement, a Meta spokesperson said: “We disagree with these allegations and intend to fight them in court. Ray-Ban Meta glasses help you use AI, hands free, to answer questions about the world around you. Unless users choose to share media they've captured with Meta or others, that media stays on the user's device. When people share content with Meta AI, we sometimes use contractors to review this data for the purpose of improving people's experience, as many other companies do. We take steps to filter this data to protect people's privacy and to help prevent identifying information from being reviewed."
The company has also noted its terms of service for the devices place the onus on users to use their devices in compliance with state laws and other relevant statutes, and they have advised users to treat the AI glasses as any recording device and not use them in ways that harm themselves or others, violate privacy, or capture sensitive information.
The lawsuits are seeking unspecified damages. However, they level a series of counts under an array of federal and California state laws governing electronic communications and privacy, among others.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuits are represented by an array of plaintiffs' attorneys, including from such firms as Morgan & Morgan; Ahdoot & Wolfson; Hausfeld LLP; Schubert Jonckheer & Kolbe; Hecht Partners; Cotchett Pitre & McCarthy; Levi & Korskinsky; Milberg PLLC; and Siri & Glimstad, among others.
