Much of the footage being recorded by the glasses is being sent to offshore contractors for data labeling, a widely-used preprocessing step in training new AI models in which human contractors are asked to review and annotate footage. It’s a laborious and highly resource-intensive process that tech companies often gloss over when discussing the prowess of their latest AI models.
The reality can be messy. Meta contractors based in Nairobi, Kenya, told Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten in a recently published joint investigation that they’re being told to review highly sensitive and intimate data.
“In some videos you can see someone going to the toilet, or getting undressed,” one contractor for a company called Sama said. “I don’t think they know, because if they knew they wouldn’t be recording.”
“I saw a video where a man puts the glasses on the bedside table and leaves the room,” one data annotator told the newspapers. “Shortly afterwards his wife comes in and changes her clothes.”
Other footage included imagery of people’s bank cards, users watching porn, or even filming entire “sex scenes.”
An employee added that they felt forced to watch and annotate or else risk losing their job.
“You understand that it is someone’s private life you are looking at, but at the same time you are just expected to carry out the work,” the employee said. “You are not supposed to question it. If you start asking questions, you are gone.”
