What until recently seemed like nothing more than a technological gimmick is now becoming a genuine social issue. Several recent cases have shown that people can be filmed without their knowledge in public spaces using this type of glasses, sometimes before the footage ends up on social media. This phenomenon obviously raises questions about image rights and privacy, but it also raises another, far more troubling question: are we in the process of losing the right to simply walk down the street without becoming an image?
We have already accepted a great many things. CCTV cameras, smartphones, smart doorbells, dashcams, TikTok videos filmed amongst passers-by. But there was usually some sort of clue. A camera mounted on a wall is visible. A phone held at arm’s length is visible. A television crew is obvious. Smart glasses are fundamentally changing the situation because the camera blends into an everyday object, worn on the face, almost invisible. The person being filmed may be completely unaware that they are being filmed.
Perhaps this is where the real revolution lies – not in the technology itself, but in our behaviour. We have always looked at others: on the underground, in a restaurant, on a beach, at an exhibition. That gaze might have been fleeting, admiring, awkward, insistent or simply absent. But it would vanish almost immediately. It might eventually become a memory. Now, that glance can produce a file.
This difference seems minuscule. It is immense.
A three-second encounter with a stranger can become a video stored indefinitely, shared with thousands of people, commented on, misappropriated, mocked, identified or archived. With artificial intelligence, this image can then be analysed, categorised, translated, cropped, compared and enhanced. We are no longer simply dealing with a pair of glasses. We are dealing with eyes connected to a computer.
And that is precisely what makes the situation so worrying. The street was still one of the last places where one could simply disappear into the crowd. Walking through Paris without being anyone in particular. Having a coffee. Waiting for a bus. Looking at a shop window. Being poorly dressed. Being tired. Kissing someone. Having an argument. Laughing foolishly. Simply being part of the human backdrop. This momentary insignificance is a form of freedom.
Social media had already begun to erode this freedom by turning every event into potential content. Smart glasses could take this logic much further. Anything that enters your field of vision becomes potentially recordable. And so, sooner or later, publishable.
The problem is no longer simply whether we have the right to film someone. The real problem is how a person can refuse to be filmed if they are unaware that they are being filmed. Is a small light on the frame really enough to alert everyone who passes in front of the lens? Will we soon have to inspect the glasses of every stranger before knowing whether we can behave normally in their presence?
Perhaps the most interesting thing is that mistrust already exists, even though this technology is still relatively uncommon. A majority of French people surveyed on the subject say they perceive smart glasses as a threat to privacy. That is quite telling. Society isn’t yet overrun by camera glasses, but it already intuitively understands what they could change.
We’ve actually been through this before. When mobile phones first came with cameras, many people thought the idea of photographing absolutely everything was absurd. Today, everything is photographed. When social media first emerged, posting pictures of your lunch, your partner, your flat or your holidays seemed narcissistic. Today, it has become commonplace. We have a remarkable ability to turn a technological oddity into everyday behaviour.
That is why it would be naïve to regard smart glasses as merely a passing fad. The smartphone has put the internet in our pockets. Smart glasses now aim to put it right before our eyes. And the next step could be even more radical: a world in which looking, recording and analysing become virtually the same action.
Perhaps the real issue lies elsewhere. Can we still live without producing content? We are gradually transforming human existence into a vast pool of audiovisual raw material. An accident becomes a video. An argument becomes a video. An encounter becomes a video. A humiliation becomes a video. A stranger passed in the street becomes a video.
We are documenting our lives to such an extent that we risk eventually no longer knowing how to live them without recording them.
Smart glasses may symbolise this shift. The moment when the camera ceases to be an object we take out of our pocket and becomes a permanent extension of our gaze. And when every glance can become a recording, it is no longer just our right to our own image that is under threat. It is something more subtle, more everyday and perhaps more precious: the right to be seen without being recorded, the right to exist for a few seconds in the life of a stranger and then to disappear.
In short, the right to go unnoticed.
