Privacy Panic, Creep Glasses, and Hospitality’s Head Start

It could be argued that this was the summer of wearables. Everywhere you look, individuals are now donning sleek, fairly inconspicuous wearable devices powered by incredible innovation and ever-watchful dashboards. The Oura rings, the screenless wrist straps, the latest AirPods, and, of course, the infamous Meta glasses have taken consumers by storm – in some ways good and, in others, bad.
 
Meta, in particular, has experienced something of a PR crisis following the release of its newest, non-branded Meta glasses back in June. While the broader category of wearable technology is mostly well received, the more specific niche of camera-and-video smart glasses has ignited an outpouring of controversy and mistrust. 
 
When Kylie Jenner debuted a new style of the glasses that she designed, the conversation around the potential misuse of these glasses for non-consensual surveillance exploded practically overnight. And the backlash wasn’t isolated or short-lived, either. Other celebrities and influencers that partnered with Meta or simply chose to wear the glasses faced increasingly sharp criticism from fans, who view the glasses as a significant privacy and safety concern, especially for women.
 
This controversy has also spurred a 230-page lawsuit against Meta; according to the Los Angeles Times, Meta is being accused of fraud and false advertising, along with violating other consumer protection laws in various states. The consumer perception of the glasses has taken such a turn, that Futurism published an article earlier this month titled, ‘Zuckerberg’s Pervert Glasses Have Been So Publicly Shamed That Meta’s Reportedly Now Working on a Version With No Camera.’ More recently, Andrew Bosworth, Meta's chief technology officer, attempted to counter the negativity by insisting that the conversation around Meta glasses “shouldn’t be dominated by a small number of bad actors.” 
 
The privacy panic, in this case, is familiar, and easy to understand. Talk of AI has dominated recent news cycles, and in some cases the sentiment has been borderline apocalyptic in nature. Simply put, not everyone will (or should have to) welcome AI transformation with open arms, or open minds. But there is a certain level of inevitability in the air; regardless of one’s individual appetite for AI, the train has long left the station. And in hospitality, specifically, that train is already several stops down the line.  
 
After all, our industry strikes an unspoken bargain with each guest: give us your preferences, your patterns, your data, and we'll give you back a stay worth remembering long after you’ve checked out. Wearable AI and recognition technology aren't a departure from that bargain so much as they are the next chapter of it.  

The Same Trade, Made in a Different Room

One of the widely touted use-cases of AI within hotels is wearable technology, and it’s not hard to understand why. Armed with tools that have built-in guest recognition features, staff are able to intercept guests with a level of seamless personalization that is otherwise impossible. And while I certainly understand the privacy concerns pertaining to AI technology and believe they should be appropriately explored and answered for, I do think most of us are more fearful of the idea of surveillance more than the reality of it. 
 
The truth is that surveillance isn’t new, and most of us already opted into a version of it a long time ago. From posting photos on social media to tagging locations, and participating in loyalty programs, the trade of personal information for personalization or social reward is common enough that many of us don’t even consciously think about it.  
 
So, if you ask me, the question hospitality now faces isn't whether guests will accept being recognized by a machine. Rather, it's whether the industry can learn to ask permission as fluently as it already delivers the perk.

The Guest Who Wants to Be Recognized

Think about it – how long have we been talking about personalization in hospitality? More specifically, personalization at scale? Delighting guests in a way that feels intimate and genuine, and yet not-at-all invasive or overly contrived is quite literally the name of our game. 
 
As any seasoned hotelier could surely tell you, a returning guest with a standing dinner reservation, a known allergy, a preferred pillow, doesn't experience personalization as intrusion. It’s a baseline expectation, ordinary enough to be invisible, but simultaneously necessary enough that the absence of it registers like an affront. A blank stare at the front desk or the need to explain the same request more than once is, more often than not, catalogued as a service failure.  
 
That's the piece I think is missing from the Meta conversation. Recognition isn't inherently a threat when permission is requested and knowingly granted.  
 
Now, it’s worth being clear about what the application of this technology within hospitality actually looks like. Nobody serious is proposing hotels quietly scan faces in a lobby and cross-reference them against some database without guest consent. 
 
Instead, the use of these tools will be tied to a loyalty tier, offered as an opt-in the same way an upgrade or a late checkout is. Said another way: it is a perk, not a default for every guest who steps on property. And this is really where the modern hospitality experience splits between the anonymous stay or the recognized one. Guests, as they always have, will get to choose precisely the kind of experience they are interested in. Now, the dangling carrot of personalization is just a little more ripe.  

"Who's Checking the Robot?"

Now, you might be thinking… if an AI agent is doing the recognizing, greeting, personalizing, who's making sure it doesn't get it wrong? This is a fair question, and one that plagues nearly all applications of AI at this current moment in time. Sure, we can automate processes, but can we trust the output of that automation? Just how much oversight should we insist upon to ensure these tools get it right? 
 
Just as there was human slop before there was AI slop, there were human mistakes before there were AI mistakes. On hotel grounds, any guest-facing mistake can be damning, so no one should minimize the checks-and-balances required to keep trust intact.  
 
But an internal hospitality agent isn't a different species of risk. It's the same hand-off, with higher stakes attached, which demands thoughtful governance. And that governance, at least in this context, is fairly straightforward.  
 
Audit the recognition data the way you'd audit anything else guest-facing, always give staff the ability to override and apply their own judgement and instinct, and make the opt-out as easy to find as the opt-in.

Asking First Isn't the Hard Part

Ultimately, I don't think the privacy conversation happening around Meta right now is overblown, and I don't think hospitality gets to sit this one out just because we come to the hypothetical table with better manners. 
 
But I can’t claim to believe that recognition technology is some unprecedented ethical frontier the industry has never navigated before, because we have been on this path for some time now. Quite literally every loyalty program is a version of this bargain, and most guests have celebrated it, simply because the ask has always been clear and the benefit has always been worthwhile.  
 
I also think it’s worth asking: if a guest will happily let a hotel remember their room preferences, their dinner reservation, and their coffee order, what exactly are they protecting by refusing to let it remember their face? But either way, that's the guest's call to make, not the industry's to assume. The only job left for hospitality is to keep asking the question well. 

Fortunately, hospitality already knows how to ask what the guest wants. If anything, it is the one thing our industry has never stopped doing exceptionally well.