Quick Take

Don’t be Seduced by Meta’s Orion AR Glasses

October 3, 2024

Last week, Meta wowed investors and technology pundits with a new pair of augmented reality (AR) glasses that layers computing on top of the wearer’s physical surroundings. Rather than having to look down at one’s phone or fetch a computer, users can view digital content as part of their field of view. While many are excited about the promise of enhanced convenience, there are a number of reasons to be highly concerned about this development.

The glasses, which are still in prototype form, caused a stir because they are the first metaverse (or 3D immersive) product that actually delivers significant AR capabilities while allowing the wearer to look like a normal participant in society. Apple’s Vision Pro, by contrast, is a bulky goggle that’s cumbersome and difficult to use in public. Meta’s other metaverse product, the virtual reality (VR) Quest headset, is similarly clunky, uncomfortable, and impractical for long-term use. As tech commentator Alex Kantrowitz observed, the new Meta glasses “makes mainstream augmented reality feel real for the first time.”

There are at least three reasons to be highly wary of Meta’s latest breakthrough with Orion, the company’s name for the new glasses. The first reason has to do with Meta’s business model. Across its multiple platforms and products —from Facebook to Instagram, WhatsApp and Quest — the company’s revenue model relies on extracting users’ data to create profiles for targeted advertisements. Essentially, users pay for Meta’s services with their personal data, which the company reserves the right to use for wide-ranging purposes, including “to send personalized commercial content.”

When it comes to 3D-immersive, or metaverse, technologies, this type of data extraction and use is highly problematic. What makes AR glasses work is an array of extraordinarily sensitive sensors that track a users’ head and eye movements, as well as their physical surroundings. Such body-based data, can then be used to infer deeply sensitive information about a person, including their health conditions, mental states, behavioral tendencies, and even sexual preferences. Companies developing metaverse products can voluntarily adopt privacy-protective measures, such as Apple’s on-device storage of eye-gaze data. Yet Meta, due to its ad-based business model, has not adopted such measures and is unlikely to do so unless required by regulation.

Second, the Orion glasses infuse their 3D immersive features with AI capabilities, enhancing the product’s seemingly supernatural appeal. For example, without being prompted, the glasses might scan your fridge for ingredients and suggest what to fix for dinner. But this capability comes with the opportunity for manipulation. As Louis Rosenberg, an AR expert and founder of Unanimous AI, has written, 3D immersive technologies might become “the most dangerous tool of persuasion ever created” by pairing real-time surveillance with real-time influence carried out by AI agents that leverage a wealth of real-time data about the objects of their influence to nudge them imperceptibly toward specific actions.

Third, products like Orion are bound to further distance people from real life. While waiting at a supermarket line, you might decide to project a YouTube video rather than interact with fellow shoppers. As Kantrowitz observed, “It’s potentially disconcerting that the glasses might detach us even further from being present in real life.” But he quickly dispels this concern by echoing Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth’s prediction that “devices like Orion might recognize the social situation you’re in and decide when to interrupt you.” But do we really trust a company like Meta, which has a vested interest in flooding our attention with targeted ads, to refrain from interrupting us out of concern for our social and mental wellbeing? The answer, surely, is no.

So, rather than being seduced by the technical breakthroughs achieved by Meta’s Orion, consider the many reasons why Meta doesn’t deserve our trust — or our business.