Smart glasses make it easier to record women and children without their knowledge, while AI can transform everyday images into sexualised material. In the first of a two-part series on the risks posed by wearable cameras, Raj Joshi argues that the danger begins before any abusive image is ever created — at the point of capture

Europe has spent years celebrating the promise of artificial intelligence and wearable technology. We talk about innovation, empowerment and creativity, while giving far less attention to the way these same technologies are creating a new machinery of harm around women and children.

Two developments, each dangerous on their own, are now converging into a single exploitation pipeline: the industrial-scale generation of sexualised images of children using AI, and the silent, hands-free recording of women and minors through wearable cameras such as Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses.

Here, I will focus solely on that pipeline: how it works, why it is proliferating and what it means for consent, safety and vulnerability. In my next piece, I will consider the legal question: how the law responds to this new category of harm.

The scale of the threat is now measurable. Across 2024 and 2025, the Internet Watch Foundation assessed 15,036 AI-generated images and videos as showing child sexual abuse. In 2025, it recorded 491 reports containing realistic AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery, a 154 per cent increase on 2024, and identified 8,029 criminal images and videos within those reports. Of the AI-generated child sexual abuse videos identified in 2025, 65 per cent were classified as Category A – the most severe category.

The IWF says AI-generated abuse can draw on real children’s faces or bodies and can be produced by modifying existing imagery or generating new material. In the United States, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children recorded more than 400,000 CyberTipline reports of exploitation with a generative-AI nexus in 2025, including more than 182,000 involving offenders possessing, generating or attempting to generate AI-generated child sexual abuse material. These figures describe a threat already operating at scale.

The mechanics are brutally simple. Offenders can draw on images of children from social media, websites and other everyday online sources. The IWF says specialised AI models known as LoRAs can create realistic deepfakes of a specific child using as few as 20 existing images. Everyday images can also be manipulated into sexualised or abusive imagery, including through tools that digitally remove clothing.

The result is a synthetic pornography of childhood that can be produced without physical contact. The philosophical rupture is that harm can begin at the moment of capture, before any direct abuse occurs.

The second part of the pipeline is quieter, newer and in some ways more dangerous. Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses combine an integrated camera with hands-free capture and voice controls, normalising the idea that recording strangers is just another form of ‘content creation’. While the glasses are, of course, a legitimate consumer device, they are just as capable of discreetly recording women in cafés, girls on public transport or children in parks and pools as they are of recording consenting subjects. The absence of meaningful consent is itself a violation of personal autonomy and, in the wrong hands, that footage can later be fed into AI systems and sexualised.

The camera sits at eye level, the controls are subtle and recording is hands-free. In practice, footage can be captured without the conspicuous gesture of holding up a phone or conventional camera, leaving the subject with less opportunity to notice and object.

Meta says its glasses use a capture LED to signal when photos or videos are being taken, and current safeguards disable the camera if the capture light is covered. Meta also says this automatic blocking safeguard began with its second generation of glasses. Even with those safeguards, the device is designed to resemble ordinary eyewear and to be used hands-free.

For women and children, that can make meaningful consent harder. You cannot meaningfully consent to being recorded if you don’t realise you are being recorded. You cannot object to the later use of an image you don’t know has been captured. You cannot protect yourself from exploitation you can’t see.

Once footage exists, it can be fed into AI systems for manipulation. A girl filmed in a swimming pool or a child recorded at a school event can become source material. The glasses therefore act as a potential capture mechanism for an AI-driven exploitation pipeline as well as posing a privacy problem.

The apparent harmlessness of ‘ordinary’ images is part of the danger. Parents post photos of their children at sports days, swimming lessons and birthday parties. Teenagers post selfies, dance videos and holiday clips. Women appear in the background of strangers’ videos every day. A child’s face from a school website can be extracted, isolated and sexualised. A woman’s body captured on a train can be used to generate deepfake pornography. A teenager’s TikTok dance can be transformed into explicit content. Any existing image can become source material, however non-sexual its original context.

Traditional transparency around photography often depends on visible cues. The UK Information Commissioner’s Office notes that a smartphone held aloft often provides a visible signal that a photograph or video may be about to be taken. Wearable cameras reduce that visual cue: recording can be initiated from eyewear that looks much like ordinary glasses.

That loss of visibility can make it harder for bystanders to know when recording is taking place and to refuse or withdraw consent. It turns public spaces into potential capture zones and women and children into potential source material.

Public concern is already measurable. A 2026 survey of 1,096 U.S adults found that 72 per cent were at least somewhat worried about being secretly recorded in public, with women more concerned than men. Eight per cent overall said the existence of camera-equipped smart glasses had changed their behaviour in public, rising to 15 per cent among adults aged 18 to 29.

The presence of wearable cameras can therefore affect how some people move, behave and feel in public.

When footage is fed into AI systems, the harm can endure. The IWF says AI-generated child sexual abuse material can re-victimise survivors, fuel sexual interest in children, normalise extreme violence and increase the risk of progression to contact abuse. As explained above, victims may never know that manipulated images of them exist, and abusive material can be difficult to contain once circulated.

Taken together, the exploitation pipeline is clear. Wearable cameras can provide source images without a subject’s knowledge. Images can also be scraped from social media, school sites and other public sources. AI models can then transform ordinary images into sexualised deepfakes, which can be shared and circulated. This chain is already technically possible and, in parts, demonstrably operating.

Dr Raj Joshi is a senior barrister and prominent civil rights advocate whose career spans frontline legal practice, regulatory reform, and international justice. Twice named among the ‘Top 10 Asian Lawyers in the UK’ and listed in the ‘100 Most Influential Asians in the UK’, he has appeared before major inquiries, including giving evidence in the Stephen Lawrence case, and served as Chair of the Society of Black Lawyers. A former Adjudicator to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, Dr Joshi has advised ministers, helped shape legal protocols, and represented the UK in international legal forums. 

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