Smart glasses expose schools and hospitals to liability risks

Smart glasses are dominating tech headlines, with more manufacturers still entering the space. While the devices promise real innovation, they also raise clear privacy concerns, particularly around their ability to facilitate non-consensual recording.

Smart glasses are indistinguishable from an ordinary pair of eyewear, making it easier for an offender to covertly capture photos, video, and audio in environments that should be safe, trusted spaces, like schools and healthcare facilities. When these organizations, and others like them, assess their exposure to this risk, they must consider how the glasses are used, what controls are in place to prevent inappropriate use and how prepared the organization is to respond to an incident.

Environments that serve vulnerable populations face heightened exposure

Concern about technology-facilitated harm to children is well-founded. A recent UNICEF report found nearly one in five children experienced some form of tech-facilitated sexual exploitation in a single year, underscoring how quickly digital tools can be misused against vulnerable populations. The technology's ability to blend in with everyday accessories further amplifies the exposure, in both public spaces and trusted private ones like schools. AI integration in the glasses enables perpetrators to easily edit captured images for inappropriate use, without the knowledge of the recorded individual or the facility where the image capture occurs.

In healthcare settings, AI tools are changing how professionals work, with 81% of healthcare executives planning to use AI in patient treatment, according to data from Beazley's 2026 Digital Health & Wellness survey. The technology is assisting with diagnoses and transcribing patient conversations. But care must be taken to ensure AI does not gain access to sensitive patient information and the AI integration in smart glasses increases the likelihood that this may occur.

The Digital Health & Wellness research shows that 73% of healthcare professionals are concerned about the trustworthiness of AI - and with good reason. Inaccurate transcription, use of hallucinated diagnoses or medical advice and capture of images or video without patient permission are all AI exposures that healthcare professionals can be liable for in an exam room. As AI becomes more embedded in healthcare settings, plaintiffs' attorneys increasingly request to see a provider's use of AI, including how medical notes and diagnoses are generated. If any AI-sourced information is incorrect and subsequently relayed to a patient, the provider is still responsible.  

Incidents involving wearable recording devices also carry employment and reputational consequences in care settings, including exposure to retaliation claims if a provider, teacher, or student is accused of using smart glasses inappropriately. Executive risk exposure is possible if organizations fail to adequately protect employees or clients. And there's also possible knock-on abuse litigation, where organizations can be held responsible for what they knew ahead of an incident, including prior awareness of smart glasses use, and what action, if any, they took.

The risks are not hypothetical, but they aren't fully mapped either

Although the impact of smart glasses and covert recording is unfolding, previous incidents of inappropriate technology use have set a precedent. In a recent case, a Texas gynecologist was criminally charged for using his phone camera to secretly record patients during examinations. Smart glasses amplify these existing concerns, as they lower the barrier to secret recording. Their AI-integrated tools can analyze and alter images, amplifying the damage a single incident causes.

Organizations should plan for this exposure now, as they would for any emerging risk. Part of what makes this risk difficult to transfer is that it doesn't fit neatly into one insurance product. Coverage will depend on who was recorded and what happened to the footage afterward. If a patient or client is recorded, it may fall under professional liability. If the device itself is breached, or the recording is stolen, leaked, or improperly disseminated, cyber coverage comes into play. If a provider records fellow employees, the claim will be an employment practices matter. A single incident can trigger multiple coverage lines, and because the split isn't clean, an organization's protection depends on how its coverage responds across all of them, not just what's nominally in place. Some carriers are broadening AI-related coverage while others may move to exclude it, so the choice of broker and carrier now affects how protected an organization is.

Partnering with a broker who can get into the weeds on coverage and risk assessment is essential, as is working with a carrier that takes a proactive approach to risk management, with claims teams who understand how to respond to the risks these environments pose.

Prioritize prevention and response over outright prohibition

Prevention and response don't require reinventing the wheel, but rather extending existing practices to account for what makes smart glasses different. Clear policies, training, supervision and reporting routes are essential as these devices become more common. Guidelines should define where smart glasses might be appropriate and where they should be prohibited outright.

Locker rooms, classrooms and exam rooms are obvious starting points for explicit bans, but those policies should extend to everyone who moves through the space: Employees, students, patients, visitors, contractors, and volunteers alike. When a concern is raised, organizations need an established process for determining what a pair of smart glasses may have recorded or transmitted, along with a response plan to address the exposure.

The immediate step doesn't require waiting for regulation or a claim. If someone is wearing a device capable of recording, the people around them need to know. If the glasses are paired with AI features, that needs to be disclosed too. This policy alone won't resolve every question this technology raises, but it gives an organization a defensible record that the risk was taken seriously. Insurance should be built to support that same proactive posture, combining coverage with prevention resources and crisis-response support, so the risk from smart glasses is managed before and after a claim occurs.