They look like ordinary glasses. They aren’t.
AI-enabled smart glasses are becoming increasingly common, and employers should start thinking about what happens when employees wear them at work.
Today’s smart glasses can contain cameras and microphones and can take photographs, record video and respond to voice commands. Some models can use AI to analyze what the wearer is seeing, translate speech and display or provide information in real time. Meta, for example, currently markets AI glasses that can take hands-free photographs and video, with certain models recording video in 3K resolution.
That creates a workplace problem that didn’t exist in quite the same way when an employee had to conspicuously pull out a phone to start recording.
What could go wrong?
Quite a lot.
An employee wearing smart glasses might record:
- a conversation with a supervisor;
- a disciplinary or termination meeting;
- confidential information displayed on a computer screen;
- client or customer information;
- proprietary processes or trade secrets;
- another employee’s medical or personal information;
- documents sitting on someone’s desk;
- an internal investigation;
- attorney-client communications; or
- coworkers who don’t realize they’re being recorded.
And because smart glasses can look much like conventional eyewear, people in the room may not appreciate that a camera or microphone is present.
The risk isn’t limited to intentional misconduct. An employee could activate a feature without fully understanding what information the device is collecting, where the information is stored or whether it is being transmitted to a third-party platform.
For employers, that makes smart glasses a privacy, confidentiality, cybersecurity and employee-relations issue all at once.
New York’s Workplace Surveillance Law
New York employers should already be familiar with Civil Rights Law § 52-c, which requires certain employers engaged in electronic monitoring to provide employees with notice.
The law applies when an employer monitors or intercepts an employee’s telephone conversations or transmissions, email or electronic transmissions, or internet access or usage using an electronic device or system. The statute specifically references computers, telephones, radio, electromagnetic systems, and photoelectronic or photo-optical systems. Employers subject to the law must provide written notice to employees upon hiring and post notice conspicuously for employees who are subject to electronic monitoring.
Violations can result in civil penalties imposed by the New York Attorney General.
Smart Glasses and The Workplace Surveillance Law
Do smart glasses fall under the law?
Potentially, but there’s an important distinction.
Section 52-c regulates electronic monitoring by the employer. It doesn’t prohibit an employee from independently wearing or using smart glasses at work.
So, if an employee brings personal smart glasses to work and uses them without the employer’s involvement, that conduct generally isn’t what § 52-c is regulating.
The answer may be different when the employer supplies the glasses, requires employees to use them, accesses information gathered by them or uses them to monitor employee communications, transmissions or internet activity.
Given the statute’s intentionally-broad reference to monitoring through electronic devices and photoelectronic or photo-optical systems, employers deploying smart glasses as workplace technology should analyze § 52-c before rollout rather than assuming the law doesn’t apply simply because the device happens to be worn on someone’s face.
What about recording conversations?
There’s another New York law employers should understand.
New York Penal Law Article 250 regulates eavesdropping, including wiretapping and the mechanical overhearing of conversations. New York generally follows a one-party consent rule. The statute defines mechanical overhearing as intentionally overhearing or recording a conversation without the consent of at least one party, by someone who isn’t present for the conversation.
That means an employee who participates in a workplace conversation and records that conversation ordinarily isn’t committing criminal eavesdropping merely because the other participants don’t know about the recording.
That does not, however, mean employees have an unrestricted right to record anything they want at work.
Company confidentiality requirements, protection of proprietary information, privacy obligations, industry-specific laws, contractual obligations and properly drafted workplace policies still matter.
And employers with employees traveling or working outside New York should be especially cautious. Recording laws differ from state to state.
New York lawmakers also have considered legislation that would change New York from its current one-party consent framework to requiring broader consent for recordings. As of August 2026, Senate Bill S5077 remains in the Senate Codes Committee and hasn’t become law.
Should employers ban smart glasses?
Not necessarily.
A blanket prohibition may be perfectly reasonable in some workplaces, particularly where employees regularly encounter confidential records, proprietary information, patient information, customer data or sensitive conversations.
Other employers may want to permit employees to wear smart glasses but prohibit certain functions at work.
And there’s another important issue: some employees may wear smart glasses as prescription eyewear. Employers shouldn’t create a rule that accidentally prohibits someone from wearing necessary corrective lenses when the real concern is the device’s recording or AI functionality.
The better approach for many employers is to regulate what the technology does, rather than simply what it looks like.
What should an employer’s policy say?
At a minimum, employers should decide whether employees may use wearable technology to photograph, record, transmit, livestream, upload or analyze workplace information.
A good policy should address:
- Recording. Are photographs, audio recordings and video recordings permitted? If so, when and with whose authorization?
- AI functions. Can employees use devices that transmit images, conversations or workplace information to an AI system for processing?
- Confidential information. Employees should understand that confidential, proprietary, privileged, personnel, customer and other protected information may not be captured or transmitted through personal devices without authorization.
- Meetings and conversations. Employers should expressly address recording during personnel meetings, investigations, client meetings and other sensitive discussions.
- Restricted areas. Some workplaces may designate locations where recording-capable wearable devices may not be used.
- Employer-issued devices. If the organization itself uses smart glasses, it should determine what data are collected, where those data go, how long they are retained and who can access them.
- Electronic monitoring. Any employer deploying technology capable of monitoring employees should review its New York Civil Rights Law § 52-c notice at the same time.
- Accommodation. Policies should leave room to address disability-related or other legally required accommodations rather than imposing an inflexible prohibition.
Does every employer need a smart glasses policy?
Every employer doesn’t necessarily need a new, five-page policy entitled “Smart Glasses.”
But every employer should ask whether its existing policies cover them.
Pull out your electronic-device, confidentiality, cybersecurity, workplace-recording and AI policies. If they prohibit only “cell phone recordings,” they may already be outdated.
The better language is technology-neutral. Think in terms of recording devices, wearable technology, smart glasses, AI-enabled devices and other devices capable of capturing, transmitting, storing or analyzing audio, video, images or workplace information.
That way, you aren’t rewriting the handbook every time Silicon Valley invents another device employees can wear.
The Bottom Line
Smart glasses are another example of technology moving faster than workplace policies.
For New York employers, the answer isn’t panic and it isn’t necessarily a universal ban.
It’s having a rule before there’s a problem.
Review your policies now. Decide what employees may record, what information may be transmitted to third-party or AI platforms, where recording-capable devices may be used, and how employer-provided wearable technology will interact with New York’s electronic-monitoring law.
Because discovering your smart-glasses policy during a termination meeting when you realize the employee may have been recording the whole thing is about one meeting too late.
