The dark side of Meta’s smart glasses: Harvard students reveal how Mark Zuckerberg’s creepy spectacles can be used to instantly find strangers’ names and addresses

Since Meta debuted its smart glasses in 2021, concerns have been raised about their ability to film people without their knowledge.

Now two Harvard students have expanded the device’s privacy-invading capabilities even further – by building a modified version called ‘I-XRAY’.

The creepy system uses AI and facial recognition software to instantly decipher people’s identities.

In an astonishing clip, the students go up to random strangers and quickly identify their names and other personal details – including their home address, work history and even their parents’ names.

It’s reminiscent of the Black Mirror episode, White Christmas, in which a hopeless singleton uses an implant to instantly find information about strangers online.

The creepy technology called I-XRAY, developed by Harvard students, lets you go up to any stranger and quickly identify him

In the Black Mirror episode ‘White Christmas’, hopelessly single Harry (Rasmus Hardiker) uses an implant to instantly find information about strangers online

The technology was created by AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio, two engineers at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“The purpose of building this tool is not for misuse, and we are not releasing it,” they say in one document outline the technology.

‘Our goal is to demonstrate the current capabilities of smart glasses, facial search engines, large language models and public databases.

‘[We’re] raising awareness that today it is possible to get someone’s home address and other personal information just from their face on the street.”

At X (Twitter), Nguyen posted a video of the technology with the caption: ‘Are we ready for a world where our data is visible at a glance?’

As the students show in the video, they use a combination of existing technology on the market to create AI glasses “that reveal a person’s personal data just by looking at them.”

First, students take a pair of Meta Ray Bans 2, released last year, “because they are almost indistinguishable from regular glasses.”

At the touch of a button on the side of the specs, these glasses can film up to three minutes of live video, which can be streamed to Instagram.

The students brought a pair of Meta Ray Bans 2, released last year, ‘because they are almost indistinguishable from regular glasses’

The live streamed images are monitored by a program called PimEyes, described as a ‘reverse image search tool’.

By following the livestream, PimEyes can match a face with publicly available images of that face on the internet, the duo explains.

Once their faces are found, an AI is asked to collect details such as the person’s name, occupation and other personal data that may be associated with the image.

I-XRAY uses FastPeopleSearch, an online tool that only needs a person’s name to find more personal information, such as home addresses, phone numbers, age and relatives, from publicly available data and social media profiles.

“It all feeds back into an app we wrote on our phone,” Nguyen says in the video, posted to X.

I-XRAY is unique, its engineers say, because it works completely automatically, allowing the wearer to quickly find information about people they encounter.

The video shows the students approaching total strangers on campus, on the street and at the Harvard subway station in Cambridge.

The experts say: ‘I-XRAY initially started as a side project and quickly revealed significant privacy issues. The purpose of building this tool is not for misuse, and we are not releasing it’

The £299 glasses were unveiled by Meta at the Meta Connect conference last year

In one instance, Ardayfio approaches a woman he has never met before and asks, “Are you Betsy?” I think I met you through the Cambridge Community Foundation.”

Smiling, the woman – presumably believing she has met him before but forgotten – confirms that she is indeed Betsy and they strike up a conversation.

Fortunately, it is possible to remove your data from PimEyes and FastPeopleSearch, so that I-XRAY or a similar system cannot identify you.

Students provide links in their document with step-by-step instructions on how to do this so that “you and those you care about can protect yourselves.”

Meta has been contacted for comment.