"Are You Filming Me?" Privacy Fears Push Back Apple's Smart Glasses Launch

While Apple is expected to enter the smart glasses market belatedly, its launch schedule has been delayed.

Bloomberg reported that Apple plans to unveil its first smart glasses at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June of next year.

The smart glasses are scheduled to go on general sale by the end of next year.

Initially, Apple planned to showcase the smart glasses late this year and release them early next year, but the schedule was pushed back amid growing concerns over privacy violations.

Following the release of Meta's smart glasses, an increasing number of people have expressed anxiety that they might be secretly recorded in public places such as restaurants and workplaces.

In fact, courts in New York and Pennsylvania have decided to ban bringing smart glasses inside, and schools, gyms, and hospitals are also taking voluntary measures to ban their use to protect privacy.

In response, Apple even considered developing smart glasses that feature a camera system but do not allow photo shooting or video recording.

In this case, the cameras would be used exclusively to capture the user's surrounding environment and feed that data to AI to identify objects or locations.

Furthermore, the company also discussed smart glasses without any cameras at all, and it is known that even a prototype of the camera-free smart glasses was built.

However, pointing out that such products would diminish the advantages of smart glasses, Bloomberg noted that the likelihood of Apple releasing a camera-free product appears small.

Smart glasses are one of the most closely watched markets by major IT companies recently, with big tech firms jumping into the fray one after another, including industry leader Meta, as well as Google—partnering with Samsung for a launch in the second half of this year—and Snap.

Despite the obstacle of privacy controversies, competition among major IT companies to secure market dominance is expected to intensify.

Reported by Jung Da-eun | Video by Ahn Jun-hyeok | Graphics by Lee Su-min | Produced by SBS Digital News
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.