Amazon and Meta are facing renewed privacy concerns over their AI-powered wearables. The scrutiny lands in the same week Meta patched a recording bug in its Ray-Ban smart glasses and Amazon rolled out two new devices built to capture everyday conversations.
A bug that listened when it shouldn’t have
Between October 13 and 15, 2026, multiple Reddit users reported that their Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses were recording audio without the wake phrase enabled. According to those user reports, the glasses captured conversations without the trigger that is supposed to signal the wearer actually wants them listening.
Meta acknowledged the problem and fixed it. The bug affected the company’s second- and third-generation smart glasses. The company has not disclosed the root cause of the unauthorized recordings.
Around mid-October 2026, Meta also announced a new feature called “Private Processing.” The company says it is designed to strengthen protection for audio data collected by its smart glasses. Meta has shared few specifics on how the feature works in practice.
Amazon wants to transcribe your day
On October 15, 2026, Amazon launched two devices under its Bee brand. The Bee Frontier is a wristband priced at $74.99. The Bee Eclipse is a card-style device priced at $99.99. Both use artificial intelligence to capture and transcribe daily conversations, with a core pitch centered on summarizing those conversations and processing the data they collect.
The legal questions piling up
Meta is facing a class-action lawsuit that alleges its smart glasses transmitted sensitive footage to contractors in Kenya.
Legal experts are also warning that always-listening devices may violate state wiretap laws that require consent from every party before a communication is intercepted. A device worn on a wrist or a face does not naturally pause to ask each person in the room for permission before it starts capturing what they say.
Why this matters beyond two companies
The Meta bug shows how thin the line can be between “listening only when asked” and “listening all the time.” A single software flaw was enough to blur it, at least according to the users who reported it.
Meta is defending a class-action suit, patching an unexplained recording bug and promoting a privacy feature with limited public detail, all at once. Amazon is launching transcription hardware into that same environment, which means its Bee devices arrive with the category’s baggage already attached.
One open question is whether Meta discloses what caused the Ray-Ban recording bug and shares more about how Private Processing actually protects audio. Another is how the class-action case over the Kenya contractor allegations develops. If wiretap concerns gain traction, makers of AI wearables could face pressure to add consent mechanisms, visible recording signals or tighter limits on what gets captured.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Diego Almada Lopez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.