What happened
On 13 October 2026, at its plenary, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) adopted a statement on smart glasses and published the SPE report 'The connected gaze.' The statement gives preliminary GDPR guidance: recording must be made obvious to bystanders (bright LED lights, audio signals, voice-activation cues, privacy-friendly phone notifications) that are 'reliable, hard to ignore, and always up to date'; it allocates controller responsibility (public/professional/political use makes the user a controller; private family use falls under the household exemption); and it holds that manufacturers/providers of linked apps cannot transfer GDPR obligations to users and must ensure new processing remains compatible with the original collection purpose. It urges industry standards for bystander awareness.
Why it matters
Authoritative EDPB interpretation with GDPR enforcement weight directly targeting the next generation of AI-enabled wearables, setting de facto EU design expectations for recording indicators and clarifying liability across the supply chain. It follows Norway's push for a temporary public-place ban and a UK/Ireland 'Stop Smart Glasses' campaign, signalling accelerating EU scrutiny of ubiquitous AI-capture devices and likely feeding national-DPA enforcement.
Action needed
Smart-glasses manufacturers, app providers, and organisational deployers should review recording-notification/indicator designs, data-processing-purposes documentation, and controller/processor allocation against the EDPB statement, and monitor follow-up national DPA enforcement.