Meta cancelled the contract with the people who saw what its glasses see

Meta ended its contract with Sama after Kenyan data annotation workers told Swedish journalists they had viewed intimate footage, including people having sex, undressing, and using the toilet, captured by Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses. The 1,108 workers received six days’ notice. A class action lawsuit, UK and Kenyan regulatory investigations, and an EFF advisory followed. The case exposes the human infrastructure beneath AI: the workers who train the models see everything, own nothing, and lose their jobs when they talk about it.

In February 2026, workers at Sama, a Nairobi-based outsourcing company contracted by Meta, told Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten that they had been reviewing footage captured by users of Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses. The footage included people having sex, going to the toilet, undressing, and handling bank details. The workers’ job was to label the content so that Meta’s AI systems could learn ...