Like seemingly every major tech hardware company, Amazon has smart glasses in its crosshairs. Unlike Meta, Google, Samsung, and (potentially) Apple, however, consumers aren’t the first priority—it’s (duh) delivery drivers.
After announcing its plans to create a pair of display-equipped smart glasses for delivery drivers last year, Amazon now says it will begin rolling out 5,000 pairs to drivers before the end of the year, with a goal of having 20,000 pairs on faces by the end of next year.
Amazon’s purpose for the smart glasses is about what you’d expect: the company says it can help with less distracted navigation, aid delivery and factory workers in finding packages in warehouses, expedite tasks like scanning barcodes, or even alert workers of pets if a customer told Amazon that they have one. Basically, it does a lot of the things that Amazon workers’ current tech does, but in a form factor that lives on their face. “Hands-free” would be the operative difference here.
And as mildly useful as some of those instances might be, the idea of having to wear a pair is apparently not a popular one for every Amazon employee.
As Fast Company notes, Amazon workers in a Reddit forum for delivery drivers have already been sounding off about the idea, and not all the reactions are, shall we say, positive. Most workers, based on a quick scan of the thread, are worried about constant surveillance since the smart glasses obviously have a camera that captures everything they do all day.
In Amazon’s defense, the glasses include a “privacy switch” so that delivery drivers can turn the camera off for sensitive situations (using the bathroom, for example), but the privacy switch is—by definition—meant for exceptions. One could reasonably assume that if you’re given a pair of smart glasses, you’re expected to keep them on and active for the most part; otherwise, what’s the point?
And while Amazon has laid out its privacy policy for consumers—it says that the glasses don’t capture video, just still images, and those images are apparently anonymized and blur sensitive information like license plates and faces—what Amazon does with the data captured is a bit more opaque.
In its official press release, Amazon says:
“The blurred images are encrypted, accessible only to a limited number of people who need them to improve the delivery experience and reduce delivery errors, and automatically deleted after a short retention period.”
There’s a lot left open here. For one: images captured are “accessible only to a limited number of people who need them,” implying that data is being used for training purposes, though Amazon says it’s never viewed by third parties for processing. We’ve reached out to Amazon for clarification on the matter.
If Amazon is in fact using the visual data for training in some way, it wouldn’t be surprising. Amazon has been known for monitoring its workers extensively, which has bubbled up during union disputes. The spectrum of surveillance ranges from cameras in its warehouses to wearables that are reportedly being tested for employee check-ins and monitoring work hours, among other things.
Actually seeing what employees are doing, though, all from their POV—blurred faces or not—would definitely be an escalation in that general philosophy—even for Amazon. But at this point, Amazon doesn’t really seem to care about its reputation for Big Brother-style tracking; in fact, employees seem to expect it. Not a great look as far as company culture goes, but then again, neither is forcing employees to pee in bottles.
