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Two Harvard students use Meta-Ray-Bans and AI to obtain personal information

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Two Harvard students use Meta-Ray-Bans and AI to obtain personal information

Topline

An investigation by two Harvard students went viral on Friday when they showed how they were able to use Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses to access the personal information of people on Harvard's campus – including name, age, home address and phone number – raising significant security concerns in terms of facial recognition and artificial intelligence technologies.

Important facts

In a demo posted on have never met, asking if the information they have is correct: “Are you?” Ardayfio asks, before a woman confirms that it is her.

Nguyen and Ardayfio, who run the Augmented Reality Club at Harvard, told Forbes that they happened to have access to a pair of Meta-Ray-Ban smart glasses and realized that combining the glasses with various software had privacy implications.

By livestreaming on Instagram and monitoring the stream through a program, students developed a way for facial recognition software to initiate a search by extracting data from the reverse image search engine PimEyes.

When a face was recognized in the livestream, online links where the person appeared appeared, and using a large language model, students said they were able to access personal information such as home addresses, phone numbers and even the names of relatives.

“This could be done with any regular phone camera and still do the same damage,” Nguyen told Forbes, adding that the smart glasses were just one tool they used for the project.

They launched the project, called I-XRAY, as a public service announcement to raise awareness that large language models are at a point where they can mine data and generate insights completely automatically, Nguyen said.

Meta did not respond to Forbes' request for comment; Its guidelines on privacy concerns say it encourages users to respect others' preferences, turn off in private spaces and inform others by “voice or a clear gesture” that they are being tracked.

Main critic

A Meta spokesperson told The New York Times that the company takes privacy seriously and has developed security measures, including tamper-detection technology, to prevent users from covering the LED light display with tape. The LED light on the glasses faces outward and glows to indicate the camera is recording.

Important background

Meta has faced backlash over the discreet camera on its smart glasses, which critics say could lead to malicious actors doing more damage. The smart glasses have reportedly already sparked a college football spying scandal, and reviews describe the LED light that indicates the camera is on as a soft white light that is easily missed in broad daylight . Meta also confirmed that it may train its AI using images captured with the smart glasses when the images are uploaded to Meta AI.

How do you reduce your digital footprint?

Nguyen and Ardayfio recommend people opt out of a list of databases and search engines that people may not know their information is in, including search engine PimEyes and major people search engine FastPeopleSearch, which typically have free opt-out options offer. People who suspect their personal information has been compromised can protect themselves from identity theft by freezing their credit scores with all three credit reporting agencies, Scott Shackelford, executive director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research at Indiana University, previously told Forbes.

Further reading

How Meta's New Face Camera Ushers in a New Age of Surveillance (New York Times)

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