Nowadays, you can put a camera in anything. Cameras are now so small and discreet that any innocuous household item could house one.

If a plant happens to be sitting in a peculiar spot in your Airbnb, it is no longer just paranoid delusion to wonder if you’re being watched and observed. The act of recording someone else without their knowledge only gets easier and more deceptive with new technology, and there are few safeguards in place from the major technology companies pushing these devices.

Cameras needlessly shoved into everything is rapidly being normalised. Meta’s “smart glasses”, which have AI-powered cameras placed inside a pair of Ray-Bans, have sparked huge privacy concerns. Women report being publicly antagonised by men and unknowingly filmed, only to see the footage later as part of an abusive social media attack. Workers at Meta have reported encountering plenty of non-consensually filmed sex and bathroom use in their training data.

A prestigious literary competition is being accused of rewarding AI-written works

Despite the concerns, Meta’s glasses are flying off the shelves. Meta chief exec Mark Zuckerberg has named them one of the fastest-growing consumer electronics in history. There are more than seven million pairs currently in circulation recording the surroundings of their........

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