Australia is considering banning smart glasses in certain public spaces, while courts in several countries have issued bans as the use of wearable technology increases.
Norway’s government said it did not want to propose an outright ban. He said the appropriate use could be one where there was no risk of filming people without their consent.
He added that the proposed ban was a “high priority” and that a bill would soon be presented to parliament.
“We don’t want a society where people are worried about audio recordings, photographs and hidden footage in places and situations they are used to being in without being supervised. Such a society can be considered unsafe and set us back,” Micaelsen said.
American technology companies such as Meta, Google and OpenAI believe that wearable technology, such as smart glasses, has the potential to replace mobile phones as our main gateway to AI. They believe that talking to AI, which will listen to people’s conversations and daily lives, is easier than opening an app and typing queries. Analysts at Counterpoint Research estimate that consumers will spend more than $1 trillion between 2026 and 2032 on wearable devices.
But that has raised widespread privacy concerns about what those smart glasses might see or hear, and led some activists to call them “perverted technology.”
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