Meta’s smart glasses don’t just sit on your face. They watch, and until you dig through a settings menu, Meta may be using what they see to train its AI models. The company has started rolling out a new opt-out option for Ray-Ban Meta users, and as reported by Engadget, the setting is now available inside the Meta AI app. But here’s the thing: it’s opt-out, not opt-in. That choice alone tells you a lot about how Meta views your data.
The rollout starts with a pop-up notification in the Meta AI app that says your glasses can translate menus, identify plants, and more. It mentions that you can opt out of sharing visual data for “product improvement.” If you do opt out, Meta says that data isn’t stored after processing. That sounds reassuring. But the fact that data is being processed in the first place, before you’ve made any choice, is exactly the kind of default that privacy advocates have been pushing back against for years.
To actually opt out, you need to open the Meta AI app, go to your glasses settings, select “Meta AI,” and scroll to “store visual data from AI experiences.” Your glasses also need to be out of their case and connected to your phone. If you own more than one pair, you have to repeat the whole process for each. That’s not a user-friendly opt-out flow. It’s friction by design.
Opting out also costs you features. Meta says “visual reminders,” which let you look at an object and ask the AI to remind you about it later, won’t work without data storage enabled. It’s unclear what else breaks. That ambiguity is a problem.
The more revealing detail is buried in Meta’s help center. The company now explicitly states that AI model training from your visual data “may be automated or manual (human).” That means real people could be reviewing what your glasses see. Meta frames this narrowly, applying only to AI features like Live AI, not to photos or videos you deliberately capture. But the distinction may feel thin to users who assumed their field of view was private.
This matters beyond Meta. Wearable cameras attached to always-on AI assistants are becoming a real product category, and the data practices being set now will shape the norms for years. To change what Meta collects from your glasses today, here’s what you need to do:
- Open the Meta AI app on your phone
- Go to Settings for your glasses
- Select “Meta AI”
- Scroll down to “store visual data from AI experiences” and turn it off
- Repeat for every pair of glasses linked to your account
So yes, the opt-out exists. But you have to know to look for it, know where to find it, and accept that some features will stop working. That’s not transparency. That’s compliance theater dressed up as user control.