It’s October of 2028, and you’re at a conference. Smartglasses planted firmly on your face, recording the audio of your conversations, you hit the floor and start to circulate. And then out of the blue, someone bounds into your field of vision. “Your name,” they shout, gleefully. “How the hell are you?”

Your mind is blank. You think you know this person, but their name escapes you. Frantically scanning for a nametag, you start bluffing. “Hey…buddy,” you respond. “Not bad, not bad…” But then, your glasses come to the rescue. Like Gary on Veep or Andy Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada, your glasses get you the information in the nick of time. His name, his place of employment, and a few fun facts. “In fact, Matt,” you say confidently, “I just thought of you the last time I was hiking – you did the Pacific Crest Trail a few years ago, right?”

Examples like this, in the end, are fairly benign. But as smartglasses and other AI-powered wearables move towards mainstream adoption, concerns about voices and recordings are sure to emerge in ever greater numbers. Many people have been fixated on camera glasses when it comes to privacy, but audio recording might turn out to be the real battleground.

Several states have laws around biometric data collection, including Illinois, Colorado, Texas, and Washington, as well as several cities including New York City. Voiceprints would generally be included under this umbrella, and consent is required from the speaker to have this data used or recorded. In settings like workplaces and conferences, this could include agreeing to have your voice recorded and used for identification under certain conditions, with specific language about content deletion and local storage.

Beyond professional use cases, there are several personal and medical use cases where voice-recognition is beneficial. For people with vision loss, being able to identify someone via their voice and get information about them is a way to stay more engaged with the world and socialize with a broader circle. For those living with memory loss or dementia, having glasses tell them who is speaking, even if that person can’t be seen, can be a way to prompt them into being able to have a conversation.

All these upsides come with a raft of downsides. We’re barreling towards a world of ambient surveillance, and AI-wearables hitting the market in the next few years will only amplify this. Of course, all these devices come with on-and-off switches, but in the heat of a conversation, it can be hard to remember to tap a device. A meeting that should be legitimately recorded can turn into a gossip session about co-workers, and if someone forgets and sends out a wrap-up afterwards without double checking, Susan could discover exactly what everyone thinks of her new haircut (and that’s probably the best case scenario).

Voice-printing and matching also comes with its own set of issues. Knowing who you are speaking to at an event because their voice was matched to a TedX talk, for instance, is probably fine and maybe even beneficial; being able to identify a political dissident because of a talk they gave is obviously problematic. Rules limiting surveillance tend to develop loopholes; under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), data collected for foreign intelligence has been searched for Americans’ communications without a warrant. In a statement on June 15, 2026, Congresswoman Alma S. Adams, Ph.D. (NC-12) pointed out that “racial justice protestors, immigrants, political activists, and members of Congress have all had their privacy violated by this loophole in data warrant requirements.”

There is also the matter of AI-powered voice-spoofing, which has become a popular tactic among some scammers. As more voices are recorded and identified, this will probably become an even bigger problem – soon everyone will be “on the record” in some form or another, especially if there are hacks or breaches of note-taking companies like Fathom or Otter.ai . And while you can change your hairstyle or color or wear a mask to hide your face, it is nearly impossible to change your voice.

All of this is not to say we should stop recording on smartglasses outright. There are many benefits, from capturing conversations and providing next steps to mediating disputes about who said what to allowing you to remember where you met that guy you’ve been making small talk with. But it does mean that as we move forward, we need to be thoughtful about the rules and regulations concerning recording and voice recognition.