Meta has started rolling out a new control for its smart glasses that lets owners opt out of storing visual data from AI experiences for product improvement, according to Meta’s help center and Engadget’s September 25 reporting on the rollout. The important boundary is narrow: Meta says the setting applies to images and videos created during AI features such as Live AI and other multimodal experiences, not to ordinary camera photos and videos captured when the capture LED is on.

That distinction matters because the privacy trade-off is different from the one many people assume. If you use the glasses as a hands-free assistant that can identify objects, translate text, or respond to what the camera sees, Meta says the resulting visual data may be stored and used to improve its products. Its help page also says that use may include automated or human review. By contrast, Meta’s July privacy explanation says that if you press the capture button or say "Hey Meta, take a picture," the resulting photo or video is stored privately on the glasses until you import it to your phone.

What changed

The new setting gives wearers a way to stop Meta from using AI-experience visual data for training and other product-improvement work. Meta says the change does not affect voice interactions with Meta AI, and it does not apply to images or videos shared with Meta AI on other surfaces such as Messenger or Instagram. It also does not undo anything already processed before you turn the setting off.

Engadget reported that Meta has begun notifying some glasses owners with an in-app prompt. The notice says users can opt out of providing visual data from their AI experiences, and that if they do, the data is not stored after processing. Meta also warns that opting out may limit some features. The company specifically names visual reminders, such as asking the glasses to remember an object for later.

How to change the setting

Meta’s help center says the control lives in the Meta AI app on your phone. To change it, open the app, go to your glasses settings, tap Meta AI in the Experiences section, and switch Store visual data from AI experiences off or on. Meta says you can also set this during initial setup or when prompted by an in-app notice.

  • Have the glasses out of their case.
  • Make sure the glasses are connected to your phone.
  • Repeat the change for each pair if you own more than one.

Those steps are easy to miss, but they matter operationally. The setting is per pair, not universal across every device in your account.

What the opt-out does — and does not — change

Meta says that when you turn storage off, your visual data is not available for human review, is not used for training or other product improvement, and is not stored. That is the strongest practical privacy gain in the new control. It means future Live AI interactions and similar features should no longer feed the improvement pipeline for that pair of glasses.

What it does not do is equally important. It does not affect the separate camera system used for photos and videos with the capture LED on. It does not erase visual data already processed before you flipped the switch. Meta also excludes voice interactions, metadata associated with visual data, and certain policy-violating images and videos from this setting; it is not a blanket data-deletion control. And it does not cover content that you manually share with Meta apps or elsewhere online.

When to use it

If your main concern is whether the glasses’ AI can learn from what you see in real time, the new control is the relevant one. If your main concern is the camera itself, this setting is not the safeguard you are looking for; Meta’s published privacy description treats captured photos and videos as a separate category. For people who rely on visual reminders, the trade-off is practical rather than abstract: turning the setting off may remove a feature you actually use.

For people who use multiple pairs, Engadget says the setting must be changed on each connected pair. That makes an account-wide assumption risky: verify the preference on the device you actually intend to use.

If you care only about AI-derived visual data, open Meta AI on your phone and verify whether “Store visual data from AI experiences” is on for each pair of glasses; turning it off stops new Live AI data from being stored, while leaving camera photos and videos untouched.