Australia's Online Safety Regulator Tells Smart Glasses Makers to Blur Strangers' Faces by Default

Key points

• Australia's eSafety Commissioner published formal advice on Monday urging smart glasses companies to blur bystanders' faces automatically.
• The regulator singled out Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses as an example of the technology under scrutiny.
• eSafety warned companies may use accessibility benefits for blind and low-vision users as a reason to avoid privacy safeguards.
• The Australian federal government is facing calls to ban smart glasses with cameras outright.
• No data breach occurred; the concern is the passive, continuous collection of images of people who never agreed to be filmed.

Smart glasses that record video, worn like ordinary eyewear, are drawing sharp attention from Australian regulators. On Monday, the eSafety Commissioner, Australia's government body responsible for online safety, published formal advice to the industry telling makers to add automatic face-blurring by default, and to make it far more obvious when a recording is in progress.

The advice names Meta's Ray-Ban glasses as a prominent example of this category of device. Those glasses look largely identical to standard sunglasses but contain a small forward-facing camera that can stream or record footage of whatever the wearer sees.

Why does this matter to ordinary people on the street?

Anyone near a wearer could be filmed without knowing it. Unlike a phone held up to record, smart glasses give no obvious signal that a camera is active.

eSafety's concern is straightforward: the people being filmed never consented. There is no notification sound, no visible lens flip, no obvious red light. The regulator wants companies to fix both problems, by blurring the faces of bystanders automatically in saved footage, and by adding a clear visible or audible cue when recording starts.

The office also raised a concern about how companies frame the debate. In its published advice, eSafety warned that businesses might pit "accessibility benefits against safety and privacy considerations." That is a reference to a genuine use case: camera-equipped glasses can help blind or low-vision people navigate their surroundings, read signs, or identify faces of people they know. The regulator is not dismissing that value. It is saying that benefit should not be used as a shield to avoid building in privacy protections.

What could regulators actually do?

The Australian federal government faces pressure to go further than guidance and ban the devices. No legislation has been introduced yet, but the political pressure is real, first reported by Guardian Australia.

eSafety's current advice carries no legal force on its own. It is a signal to industry of what the regulator expects, and a public marker against which future enforcement or legislation could be measured.

The jurisdiction here sits with eSafety under the Online Safety Act 2021, though broader privacy obligations for companies collecting Australians' biometric data, information that can identify a person from their face, also fall under the Privacy Act 1988 regulated by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

What should people do right now?

There is no breach to respond to here. No passwords to change, no accounts to check. The practical steps are quieter.

If you see someone wearing smart glasses in a public space and feel uncomfortable, you are within your rights to ask whether they are recording. Current Australian law does not clearly prohibit filming in public, which is part of why regulators are pushing for technical fixes rather than waiting for the law to catch up.

Watch for any future updates from eSafety or the federal government as this guidance moves toward possible regulation.