Sadiq Khan is facing calls to ban Meta’s AI-powered smart glasses from the London Underground, amid warnings that the devices are being used to secretly record women and girls travelling on the network.
The pressure on the Mayor comes as sexual offences on the Tube have reached their highest level in five years. British Transport Police figures show 595 incidents were reported across the network between April 2024 and March 2025, underlining the scale of a problem that campaigners and police have been warning about as assaults on the Tube rise.
Liz Hunter, a campaigner at Stop Smart Glasses, fears the existing problem will get worse as the glasses become more popular and cheaper to buy. She told the Evening Standard: “You don’t need to have a wild imagination to think about all the awful possibilities and ways they could be used. They are a gift to criminals and people with bad intentions.”
Her concerns are not theoretical. Self-styled “pick-up artists” have already begun approaching women in London while wearing the glasses, then posting the footage on TikTok and Instagram without the women’s consent.
One woman told the BBC she was left “humiliated” after a man covertly filmed her at Waterloo station and then demanded money to remove the video from social media.
At City Hall, Mr Khan is being urged to ban the technology from the Tube network to reduce the risk of sexual violence and harassment. Responding to a question from Assembly Member Gareth Roberts, the Mayor said Transport for London is monitoring AI glasses and will keep its approach under review.
“AI-enabled smart glasses have a range of legitimate uses, including accessibility support, navigation, and communication,” he said. “However, concerns about their potential for misuse are understandable. TfL and I are clear that women and girls need to be supported to report incidents, that offenders are identified and dealt with, and that awareness campaigns and wider work to tackle violence against women and girls also need to reflect the risks posed by new and emerging technologies.
“I want every woman and girl to be safe and feel safe in our city and on our transport network and that’s why TfL takes all reports of sexual harassment and unwanted behaviour seriously.”
The Mayor pointed to TfL’s Ending Violence Against Women and Girls programme, which includes expanding CCTV coverage across the network, mandatory sexual harassment training for frontline staff, support for the British Transport Police’s trial of live facial recognition technology and women’s safety audits built into the planning and design of public spaces. The work sits alongside wider City Hall efforts on the issue, including a £6 million grassroots fund to tackle violence against women and girls.
“Where any technology is used to harass, intimidate, stalk, or otherwise make someone feel unsafe, existing powers and legislation can be used to support enforcement action and, where appropriate, police involvement,” Mr Khan added.
How a Tube ban would work
A ban would most likely be enforced through TfL’s conditions of carriage, which already allow staff to refuse travel to passengers breaking the rules, with repeat offenders risking exclusion from the network. Similar bans are already in force elsewhere: in early August, ATG, which owns a dozen theatres in the West End, began requiring all visitors wearing AI glasses to remove them, while Wetherspoon boss Tim Martin banned the technology across the pub chain’s 818 UK sites.
Enforcing a ban across a network carrying millions of passengers a day would be a different challenge, not least because the glasses are designed to look like ordinary spectacles. Campaigners argue a clear rule would at least give staff and police a straightforward basis to challenge anyone suspected of filming, and would deter the casual misuse that currently carries little risk of being caught.
What the law currently says
Filming in a public place is not, by itself, illegal in the UK, and there is no general right not to be recorded on a train or platform. But the picture changes where recording is used to harass, stalk or intimidate someone, or where images are captured for sexual gratification — upskirting, for example, is a specific criminal offence. Victims can also report unwanted filming to the British Transport Police, who can treat a pattern of behaviour as harassment even where a single recording might not break the law.
For now, TfL’s position is watch and review. Campaigners, pointing to the theatre and pub bans already in place, want City Hall to move faster — before a device that can film at the blink of an eye becomes a standard feature of the daily commute.
