AI glasses are the latest evolution in wearable tech, and thanks in part to celebrity endorsements like Kylie Jenner’s campaign for Meta’s smart glasses, they're taking off.  But these devices, dubbed ‘pervert glasses’ by some critics, are raising fresh concerns about privacy and surveillance.  Today, Dr Milica Stilinovic, a researcher at University of Sydney’s Governing Immersive Tech project on why they’ve become so popular and the risks that come with them. Featured:  Dr Milica Stilinovic, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Sydney’s Governing Immersive Tech project.Subscribe to ABC News Daily on the ABC listen app.Program:More from ABC News DailyAustralia, AI, AI Ethics, FashionTranscriptSam Hawley: You can use them to take photos, listen to audio, make calls for maps and live translations. And Meta glasses are growing in popularity, with millions being sold with the help of endorsements from celebrities like Kylie Jenner. But they're also a great way to get a little bit of fun. They're also being dubbed 'pervert glasses.' Today, Milica Stilinovich, a postdoctoral researcher at Sydney Uni, on her work into the dangers of the tech. I'm Sam Hawley. I'm on Gadigal Land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily.Social media : Uh, yep, here I am, just minding my business at the airport. Hey, excuse me? And this guy starts to talk to me. Hi, so sorry to bother you. I'm from the United States. Didn't know he was recording me.Social media : You're like, really sexy. This morning I wake up and my brother sends me this post on Instagram. Are you single? Do you mind if I get your phone number? No idea he recorded this whole conversation with his glasses.Social media : I did not give him consent to post it. This is something that is happening. Not only in Austin where I live but everywhere. These Meta glasses, we need to be on the lookout.Sam Hawley: Milly, we're going to consider the research you've been doing into AI glasses, which most of us probably don't have yet, but some of us might, because this is a very fast-growing industry, isn't it?Dr Milica Stilinovic: Booming indeed. Over the last quarter, we've just seen booms, particularly in the way of Meta smart glasses, and in particular, their transition to the Wayfarer lenses, of which Ray-Ban is a part of. And we've seen boom in the smart glasses because of the adoption of these a lot more fashionable lenses.Sam Hawley: Yes, interesting. Okay, so we're going to come to everything that these AI glasses can actually do in a moment, but let's start with the fact that they have a wide lens camera, which means the user can, what, capture whatever they're looking at.Dr Milica Stilinovic: Pretty much, yes. You turn these glasses on and you can walk down the street and it's pretty much capturing everything that your human eye is intending to capture.Sam Hawley: Wow, so that brings me to the videos that you have been looking at as part of your research, 350 Instagram posts. Just tell me about that.Dr Milica Stilinovic: 350 and counting, unfortunately. Yes. It's an emerging space and it seems to be just getting bigger and bigger. So what did I see? I saw these so-called pickup artist communities deeply embedded in the manosphere adopt quite easily to the features available to them with smart glasses. I saw them use these features, mainly audio and video recording, live streaming and uploading content to platforms to harass women. Wow. They've approached them on the street, at gyms, at their places of work, at the beach. They zoom into parts of their bodies that they couldn't have done before with a smartphone. They often ask for their phone number and if that's not successful, they're going to ask for the Instagram handle. And then this content is uploaded online, which exposes these women to a barrage of abusive comments and potential doxing and harassment.Sam Hawley: Wow, okay, this is so concerning. And we have seen this sort of filming around the world, including on Bondi Beach last year when an American uploaded videos of women he had filmed on his sunglasses. I have seen them referred to as pervert glasses. Yes.Dr Milica Stilinovic: It's so concerning. Yes, pervert glasses worn by 'glassholes' has become the mantra to describe these types of smart glasses. Yes, funnily enough, a lot of the videos are coming from the United States, particularly around Miami. But interestingly, we saw that cultural intersection of an American influencer, a so-called pickup artist, begin filming on the beaches of Bondi. And interestingly, while he was banned off Instagram, he's found his way onto TikTok. But yes, we're kind of seeing that intersection and then we're seeing that pickup artistry normalisation slowly make its way onto the streets of Sydney and other major capital areas.Sam Hawley: Wow, okay, and in some cases, a woman wouldn't even know she's being filmed, right?Dr Milica Stilinovic: No, so these smart glasses works by once you're recording, a small blinking light appears at the front of the glasses. It's quite discreet. And so from what I've seen, these pickup artists, for example, they head down to the beach, they start chatting to a woman. It is not putting a smartphone camera in their face. It's not putting a vlogging camera in their face. It's putting some sunglasses in front of them, having a chat with them, filming their bodies while they're minding their own business, and then uploading that to a lot of viewers online.Sam Hawley: Oh my gosh, okay. But Meta, Milly, it has made it so you can't actually hide the camera. That's right, isn't it?Dr Milica Stilinovic: Right, and even so, even if this does become a normal behaviour, we understand that when we see this discreet light blinking that someone is recording, what are we signing up to and for what cost? Yeah. Have we decided to become a society that the minute we leave our front doors that we're going to expect to be recorded? Has this become the reality?Sam Hawley: Okay, all right, well, Milly, let's come back to the privacy concerns in a moment. If you look online, these glasses, they'll set you back around $500, maybe a bit more. They come in all sorts of styles and they can be, let's face it, they can be quite stylish. Just tell me what else they can actually do, these glasses, apart from having this quite sophisticated camera.Dr Milica Stilinovic: So they do provide a range of features dependent on the brand. Interestingly, Meta has become to smart glasses what Google has become to search engines in that when we refer to smart glasses, most people assume that it's Meta. But there are a variety of different brands out there with their own smart glasses, and these smart glasses beyond the audio-visual and platform integration, there's also AI, live translation, maps. We're also talking in some iterations that they have AI-enabled particular programs for those who are visually impaired. So it's an entire computer stack that augments a layer of these computational affordances into your line of sight.Sam Hawley: They can be quite useful, and not everyone is going to misuse them.Dr Milica Stilinovic: Of course, not everyone is going to misuse them. Of course, not everyone is going to misuse them. I would also say that there are many people out there with smart glasses, content creators, who would use them to the advantage of taking you along on their latest skating expedition or showing you how to cook the latest dish from a perfect point of view or POV. But more often than not, despite there being these positives, there is a big price to pay, and that is beyond covert recording and the lack of consent, beyond real-time doxing, beyond harassment and even voyeurism. These glasses are what we refer to as super sensors. So in way of data capture, these glasses are always on. They have microphones, they have cameras, and they basically become face-mounted data vacuums, data harvesters that capture more than you think that they are. And the purpose of that is AI large learning model training. And this particular information, this sensitive data, can be handed off to third-party labelling firms who would then have access to very sensitive data that you didn't think you exchanged with this particular corporation in the first place.Sam Hawley: So Milly, there are benefits to these glasses, including for people with a vision impairment, but also like all technology, there are concerns, and governments are really slow to catch up, right? This is really hard to regulate.Dr Milica Stilinovic: So I think it has to do a lot with the pace of technology itself and the fact that there is, while again we cannot accuse tech companies of not doing anything, they're not doing a lot. And what I mean by that is there is an inherent lack of transparency from the operational aspects of these tech companies. And so what tends to happen is that tech companies unleash a technology, the harm happens, and then we have to rush to scramble to regulate that harm. What is currently taking place with smart glasses is that in the Australian context, we have an understanding of privacy, we have an understanding of what mechanisms we need to mitigate risk in the digital privacy space, but that is continuously evolving with the pace of tech. And so before you know it, our understanding of privacy tends to become outdated, not in step with the potential harms that are happening with wearing this particular technology on your face and having access to spaces that you wouldn't have had with other technologies, and you're opening up societies to quite large risk.Sam Hawley: So you don't think our privacy laws protect us against these AI glasses?Dr Milica Stilinovic: No, because we couldn't have understood what particular harms are coming our way, and we never really thought that we would be wearing computers on our faces, essentially.Sam Hawley: Yes. Well, Instagram, it has said, and of course Instagram is owned by Meta, it has said that the platform will take down any content that is harassing. I mean, that's a good step, isn't it?Dr Milica Stilinovic: It's a good way to say that we're doing something, sure, but ever since that has been put into place, sure, some of the content that I'd previously seen is not there anymore, but in its place, just like mushrooms after the rain, I'm seeing 50 other videos that have cropped up. The problem is out there, the genie is out of the bottle. And so saying that we're going to clamp down on this, no problem, we'll still use your smart glasses and take it over to TikTok, or we'll just come up with a whole bunch of different other hashtags to be able to promote this type of pick-up artistry that is enabled through smart glasses.Sam Hawley: All right, well, Milly, tell me then, what should we be doing until regulations are in place to protect us? What can we do to protect ourselves? There are some novel ways I understand out there, including playing Disney music. Just tell me about that.Dr Milica Stilinovic: I haven't seen anyone break out into a song, but because Disney tends to clamp down on the use of music or copyright music without usage permissions, it has been said that people have started to sing big Disney ballads if they know they're being recorded by smart glasses. The jury is still out of whether this type of thing is going to work, but we'll say it's worth a shot. This is the sad part of the story, isn't it, that, again, the onus is placed on individuals and societies to protect themselves from a technology that was meant to be to our benefit. But if there were any immediate things that I could say, number one, remember that these smart glasses, or most of them, have that capability to record and stream or upload to a platform. So the ability for facial recognition or doxing is very possible. What I would suggest is lock all your platforms. The next step would be don't put your face or name on your Instagram or other social media profiles, perhaps apart from LinkedIn, I guess. Put a photo of your family cat. Interesting. That way you won't be recognisable. And always check how much data you're actually sharing online. That goes without saying for all of us, smart glasses or not.Sam Hawley: So, Milly, overall, what do you think? Is the tech worth the risk? Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, he has said that people who don't wear smart glasses in the future may be at a pretty significant cognitive disadvantage. Do we believe him, though?Dr Milica Stilinovic: I love these big banners. Oh, you're going to be cognitively disadvantaged. This is the next enhancement of the human experience. Have we ever thought to ask what and why? How are we going to be cognitively left behind if we don't buy into this tech? What is productivity according to you? What benefits are we bringing from not having a smartphone in our hands and putting it on our faces, essentially? How are you measuring this benefit to society?Sam Hawley: Dr Milica Stilinovic is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Sydney's Governing Immersive Tech project. This episode was produced by Ilaria Brophy. Audio production by Cinnamon Nippard. Our supervising producer is Sydney Pead. I'm Sam Hawley. Thanks for listening.