Qualcomm Executive Urges Privacy Protection for New Camera-Equipped Smart Glasses

Smart glasses with built-in cameras and audio recording are growing in popularity, but rising privacy concerns need urgent attention from the tech industry. Ziad Asghar, Senior Vice President and General Manager of XR, Wearables and Personal AI at Qualcomm Technologies Inc, discussed these challenges at the Snapdragon Summit in Maui, Hawaii. Asghar noted that while cameras offer major benefits for context capture, platform providers must give brands backend privacy tools. Current smart glasses typically use recording lights or flashing LEDs to signal when a picture or video is being captured. Qualcomm has built a robust security subsystem and trust-management engines to support always-on agentic AI devices. Within their sensing hub, an always-sensing camera can detect faces without recognizing them and automatically obfuscate face information so that saved images lack facial data and stay on the device. Brands using Qualcomm's platform can also choose to launch audio-only glasses without cameras, and tampering with the camera link or covering the lens will disable the device. Meanwhile, Meta recently launched camera-less glasses at its Menlo Park headquarters using a Qualcomm chip, limited to audio, music, calls, and an AI assistant named Muse. Meta has previously faced scrutiny over users recording without consent, prompting updates to prevent users from covering recording lights. Samsung's upcoming glasses, powered by Google software, will similarly feature a tamper-resistant privacy light. Despite privacy unease, tech companies see strong use cases for cameras, such as allowing glasses to recognize a user's location and request an Uber without taking out a phone. Qualcomm also brought AI agents into glasses and earbuds at the summit to understand user intent locally. Asghar predicts that glasses will evolve into a distinct product category across multiple tiers, starting with audio-only entry-level models, followed by camera versions, and eventually glasses with color displays.