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AI-enabled smart glasses – which combine eyewear with real-time audio, video, and AI functionality – are now entering the workplace. They provide productivity and accessibility benefits by allowing users to capture information, receive prompts, and interact with AI systems hands-free. But they also introduce legal risks that your existing policies and regulatory frameworks were likely not designed to address. As adoption increases, you should evaluate whether your existing workplace rules and compliance frameworks are equipped to manage the legal, privacy, and operational implications of AI-enabled eyewear. The following Insight provides answers to common questions employers are asking as AI glasses enter the workplace.
Do AI Wearables Raise Workplace Recording Concerns?
Yes – and in many cases, the risks are more significant than employers initially realize.
Unlike smartphones, AI-enabled glasses may:
In many instances, smart glasses are indistinguishable from ordinary eyewear, making it difficult for managers or coworkers to determine whether recording is occurring. This creates enforcement challenges and potential compliance exposure if workplace communications are captured without authorization.
The risk is heightened by state recording laws, which vary across jurisdictions. Eleven states require all-party consent before conversations may be recorded. If an employee uses AI glasses to record workplace discussions without proper consent, the employer may face legal exposure, particularly where confidential internal meetings or customer-facing interactions are captured. Even if the employer did not direct or approve the recording, a lack of clear policies or enforcement protocols may complicate response efforts and increase litigation risk.
Do Restrictions on AI Glasses Raise NLRA Concerns?
Not necessarily.
Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) protects employees’ rights to engage in concerted activity concerning wages, hours, and working conditions. AI smart glasses, by their nature, typically include the ability to record audio and video, take photographs, and sometimes even stream content in real time. These functions may be analogous to those found in cell phones and other electronic devices previously considered by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
In certain circumstances, recording workplace conditions may qualify as protected activity. This is particularly true where the recording documents safety concerns, harassment, discrimination, or union-related activity, and is undertaken to further a group interest, such as preserving evidence for collective action.
The NLRB 2023 Stericylce standard remains in effect despite recent guidance from the Board’s General Counsel, and it means that labor officials will scrutinize even facially neutral workplace policies that prohibit recording in the workplace. The current standard says that workplace rules are presumptively unlawful if a reasonable employee could interpret them as chilling protected concerted activity under Section 7 of the NLRA. To overcome this presumption, employers have to demonstrate that the rule is narrowly tailored to address a legitimate and substantial business interest such as trade secrets, confidentiality, or customer privacy,
With this in mind, employers should review their policies governing AI glasses to ensure they are narrowly tailored and clearly tied to legitimate business justifications so as not to infringe on employees’ Section 7 rights.
Do AI Glasses Create Data Security Risks?
Quite possibly. Data security risks associated with AI-enabled wearables could be significant and, in some cases, difficult to detect.
AI-enabled glasses could capture proprietary processes, trade secrets, internal communications, and customer or patient data. Since these devices often connect to third-party AI platforms, information may be transmitted, stored, or processed outside the employer’s direct control.
Once data leaves the organization’s internal systems, questions arise regarding retention practices, secondary use, security safeguards, and regulatory compliance. Employers may have limited visibility into how that information is handled, which can create exposure under confidentiality agreements, trade secret laws, and applicable privacy statutes.
Organizations in regulated industries, including healthcare and financial services, should be especially cautious. The inadvertent capture or transmission of protected or confidential information through wearable AI devices may implicate industry-specific privacy and security obligations.
How Do Disability Accommodation Obligations Apply to AI Glasses?
Many AI glasses are designed to look and function like ordinary eyewear and may even contain prescription lenses. While the glasses themselves may provide vision correction, the AI functionality embedded within the device is a separate consideration.
At present, ordinary prescription eyewear does not constitute a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and employers are not required to permit AI-enabled glasses simply because they include corrective lenses. In other words, presence of prescription lenses does not, by itself, transform the device into a protected accommodation.
However, this may change since wearable AI glasses can function as assistive technology. Emerging AI glasses now can provide real-time transcription, object recognition, navigation assistance, visual magnification, which may be in the future considered workplace accommodations for individuals with visual, auditory, or neurological impairments. As the technology continues to evolve, employers may consider conducting a case-by-case assessment if you identify the possible need or request for an accommodation. This may include evaluating whether the device is medically necessary, whether it addresses a documented limitation, whether there are alternative accommodations available, and whether the use of AI glasses presents safety, confidentiality, or operational concerns.
Can Employers Prohibit AI Glasses in the Workplace?
In most cases, yes.
Employers generally may restrict or prohibit AI-enabled glasses and other wearable devices where the policy supports legitimate business interests. Common justifications include maintaining workplace safety, protecting confidential or proprietary information, safeguarding customer, employee, or patient privacy, and ensuring compliance with applicable recording and data privacy laws.
If an employer decides to implement a ban, consistent enforcement is essential. Any uneven application of the policy may give rise to disparate treatment or retaliation claims.
What Steps Should Employers Take Now?
Given these new slate of risks, many employment law firms recommend you consider the following steps.
1. Review and Consider Updating Applicable Policies
2. Consider Building an Accommodation Framework That Considers AI Glasses
3. Train Managers on AI Glasses and How to Deal With Them
4. Consult Experienced Legal Counsel
Conclusion
We will continue to monitor developments related to AI wearable technology.
With a presidential election coming up in three months, politics are a hot topic of conversation nearly everywhere you go—including the workplace. As a result, many employers are considering whether to issue or adjust policies to address civility among employees, set rules for political discussions, and even clarify dress codes.
One common question: Can employees wear political gear into the office or display other paraphernalia supporting a candidate or political cause?
As long as speech and images are not violating anti-discrimination and anti-harassment laws, political statements and images can legally be permitted in the workplace.
But ultimately, employers are allowed to dictate what’s appropriate and allowed, just as they often regulate work hours or have rules about dress codes.
In the private-sector workplace, employees traditionally do not have First Amendment rights to express their political views through office decorations or apparel.
But in the current climate, the definition of what is considered political has broadened to include many topics for which an employee may indeed have the right of expression in the workplace. For example, if employees are joining together to improve their working conditions—such as protesting gender, race, or religious discrimination in the workplace—then wearing so-called political apparel could be protected speech under the National Labor Relations Act. And the act provides such protection even in workplaces where employees are not currently represented by a labor union, he noted.
The difficulty for an employer in defining what is meant by political speech means that the employer risks being overbroad, which creates a bigger problem than was present with the original decoration or clothing. Instead, employers are well served to remind all employees of existing anti-harassment or respectful-workplace policies and take action if there is a complaint about unwelcome, offensive, or intimidating behavior by an employee toward a co-worker.
For the most part, when it comes to the upcoming presidential election, employers will most likely want to avoid allowing workers to wear or decorate with obvious political paraphernalia—such as a Donald Trump shirt or a Kamala Harris sign in one’s office.
Even an employer that champions engagement and self-expression should consider whether it should be allowed. Simple parameters such as prohibiting names and images of politicians, names and logos of political parties, and identifiable campaign slogans are a good place to start as such prohibitions can help minimize the emotional heat that is often an unintentional consequence of political expression.
In general, most employees prefer that politics not play a big role in the workplace. Recent data from jobs site Monster found that 68% of workers are not comfortable discussing politics at work. While 64% of workers say they respect their co-workers’ rights to their political beliefs without passing any judgment, 33% say they have judged co-workers negatively based on their political beliefs.
Richard Birke, chief architect of JAMS Pathways, a conflict resolution firm that works with employers, said permitting employees to wear clothing with overt political statements may be offensive to colleagues or stir up arguments or incivility in the workplace.
“At our company, for example, we want to help you solve your problem; we don’t want to incidentally get in a fight with you on the way in by wearing a T-shirt advocating for a particular candidate,” he said.
Leading up to the election—and even afterward—employers should communicate clear policies around political gear and paraphernalia to employees and enforce those policies, experts said.
The policies should apply to all workers, including remote workers who may appear on video calls. If you’re on a Zoom call for work, you’re at work.
As a best practice, if a private-sector employer issues a policy about restricting political decorations or apparel, the employer should ensure it applies the same restriction to all nonwork-related decorations or apparel.
The employer has to be diligent about enforcing the same restriction when it comes to charitable causes, community events, religious organizations, and even favorite sports teams or entertainers.
Many employer handbooks and policies likely should be reviewed and revised following a landmark Aug. 2 ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Stericycle.
“This ruling, in a word, is huge,” said David Pryzbylski, an attorney with Barnes & Thornburg in Indianapolis. “This decision may invalidate countless workplace rules maintained by private-sector employers—whether they are unionized or not. It applies to all companies covered by the National Labor Relations Act [NLRA], which is the vast majority of employers in America.”
The NLRA does not apply to federal or state governmental units, railroads or airlines.
Employers need to create documentary evidence of the justification for their work rules before an unfair labor practice charge is filed, recommended Harry Johnson III, an attorney with Morgan Lewis in Los Angeles and former NLRB member.
In Stericycle, an administrative law judge found that the employer violated the NLRA by maintaining certain rules for its employees that addressed personal conduct, conflicts of interest and confidentiality of harassment complaints. The NLRB announced a new standard for whether work rules violate the NLRA and sent the case back to the judge to consider the ruling in light of the new standard.
Under that standard, if an employee could reasonably interpret the work rule to have a coercive meaning, the NLRB general counsel would have met her burden to prove that the rule has a reasonable tendency to chill employees from exercising their NLRA rights. The general counsel, currently Jennifer Abruzzo, is independent from the board and responsible for the investigation and prosecution of unfair labor practice cases under the NLRA.
The employer’s intent in maintaining a work rule is immaterial, the NLRB wrote. The board instead clarified it will interpret the rule from the perspective of an employee who is subject to the policy, economically dependent on the employer and contemplates engaging in protected concerted activity.
Concerted activity includes talking with one or more co-workers about wages and benefits or other working conditions, circulating a petition asking for better hours, participating in a concerted refusal to work in unsafe conditions, openly talking about pay and benefits, and joining with co-workers to talk directly to the employer, an agency or the media about problems in the workplace, according to the NLRB.
It’s hard to imagine the general counsel won’t be able to prove that a rule has a reasonable tendency to chill employees from exercising their NLRA rights, said Phil Wilson, president and general counsel with the Labor Relations Institute, a labor and employee relations consulting firm in Broken Arrow, Okla.
If the general counsel provides such proof, the rule is presumptively unlawful. However, the employer may counter the presumption by proving that the rule advances a legitimate and substantial business interest and that the employer can’t advance that interest with a more narrowly tailored rule. If the employer proves this, the work rule will be found lawful.
However, “with little actual guidance about the meaning of the phrases above, needless to say, it is an incredibly uphill battle if an employer finds itself trying to rebut the presumption,” said Jason Reisman, an attorney with Blank Rome in Philadelphia.
In addition, the Stericycle opinion discarded previous NLRB decisions holding that certain types of policies were inherently lawful, regardless of the precise language in which the policy is expressed, in favor of evaluation of each challenged policy on a case-by-case basis, said Peter Spanos, an attorney with Taylor English Duma in Atlanta. Policies that are no longer deemed by the board always lawful to maintain are investigative-confidentiality rules, nondisparagement rules and rules prohibiting outside employment.
“Employee handbooks and policies that were adopted or revised based on prior guidance from the NLRB may now be subject to challenge,” he said.
The decision probably will be appealed. The appellate process can take many months or even years, Pryzbylski added. “In the meantime, the board will be enforcing this new standard, so employers face the risk of having their policies invalidated if they do not revisit them to ensure they are drafted in a compliant manner,” he said. “To the extent they are found to have unlawful rules, it could result in backpay awards in the event an employee is terminated pursuant to such a rule, have negative effects on a union election outcome, as well as other penalties.”
Plus, in most cases, the NLRB does not follow a federal appeals court ruling outside of that court’s jurisdiction until the Supreme Court weighs in, if it does. “So, that may favor companies taking a fresh look at their policies sooner rather than later,” Pryzbylski said.
Examples of policies that likely need to be reviewed and rewritten to be aligned with the new board standard, according to Spanos, include work rules:
All HR professionals should work with their labor counsel to audit current employment policies for compliance with the new standard and to keep up-to-date on board decisions that will apply the Stericycle standard in coming months.
The bottom line is that many policies will be under new and intense scrutiny by the NLRB, and employers should be aware of the new standard and review and update their policies accordingly.