Shooting video is usually the fun part — editing not so much. That’s why AI-based video editing has become increasingly popular among content creators of all kinds. An assortment of apps and devices now claim to automatically sort through videos, and create a highlight reel of the “best moments.”
Meta Glasses, which allow for hands-free recording of audio and video, can also stitch together reels without manual editing. And a new patent from the company takes aim at a very specific activity: hiking.
Meta, which owns Facebook, has filed many patents related to its AI-powered smart glasses. But the latest patent, filed on October 15 with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, uses an outdoor hike as the primary example for how its automatic video reels could work. (View the patent application at the bottom of this story.) A key feature of this method involves using the audio from a recorded activity to help select the most relevant clips.
For example, if you say “Cool!” at any moment during your hike, that moment of the video is more likely to make the cut. The technology to enable this is “close to a finished feature,” according to Patentlyze, a publication covering patents from the technology industry. Widespread concerns over privacy, however, remain an issue for smart glasses in general, and Meta Glasses, specifically.
“The harder question is social,” Patentlyze wrote in a summary of the new patent. “Glasses that listen to and transcribe everything nearby will meet resistance from the people standing next to you, and the filing’s consent language is only a short paragraph. The technology looks like the easy part, and trust is the longer road to shipping.”
Meta didn’t immediately respond to GearJunkie requests for comment.
Auto Hiking Vids: The Details
To be clear, the automatic video method described in Meta’s patent isn’t just for hiking. The full title of the patent is actually: “Context-Aware Techniques for Video Highlight Extraction Integrating Audio Analysis, and Systems of Use Thereof.”
Sexy, right? But the title does make clear that there are several components to Meta’s auto-editing method. And hiking is the example that Meta chose to illustrate them. If you have a video that’s an hour long, for example, how can the AI accurately choose the same clips that a human might select through manual editing?
The answer involves multiple approaches. For starters, the user will tell the glasses to “Make a highlight reel of this hike.” Once you’ve recorded a video of the activity, the glasses will identify clips that coincide with “keywords” from the recorded audio. Examples from the patent include:
- “Hey, look at that bird.”
- “Hold on a second, let me take a picture.”
- “Hey, we made it.”
But the glasses will also interpret the audio in other ways to figure out which clips deserve a place in the highlight reel. These include:
- Emotion tags: The glasses’ AI model assigns a score for its interpretation of the audio’s “emotion/sentiment categories,” like happy, calm, or angry.
- Background noise: Clips with too much noise might not make the cut. Examples include too many speakers at once, or a roaring river that’s louder than 80 decibels.
- Objects of interest: The glasses also generate text description of the video, and may choose to include a clip if that description includes multiple objects of interest.
- Health changes: Meta’s glasses can be paired with smart devices from Garmin. So changes to your heart rate or gaze might indicate you were excited, making those moments more likely to be included in the final video.
Privacy Concerns
Hiking isn’t the only use case described in Meta’s patent. Other examples includes basketball games, parties, or even virtual reality video games.
This is also just one of many patents that Meta has filed for its smart glasses over the last year. The company has filed 77 patents for the glasses since April 2026, according to Patentlyze. Looking at these patents collectively shows how Meta is continuing to evolve its smart glasses to “track gaze, gesture, and voice at once, then decide how to respond,” the publication wrote.
The primary barrier to continued use of the technology will likely be privacy concerns: “The harder question is social,” Patentlyze wrote in a summary of the new patent. “Glasses that listen to and transcribe everything nearby will meet resistance from the people standing next to you, and the filing’s consent language is only a short paragraph. The technology looks like the easy part, and trust is the longer road to shipping.”
Last month, Meta remotely shut down the cameras on thousands of smart glasses it had already sold to consumers. The move followed widespread reports of users disabling the recording light on the glasses, which lets other people know they’re being recorded. Even more concerning to many people was Meta’s confirmation that the glasses were recording without being activated by the user. In some cases, this happened even while users were sleeping.
There’s no doubt that smart glasses offer excellent opportunities for outdoor content creation. The ability to shoot hands-free videos for active sports like skiing or biking is an obvious advantage. But the company will also have to assuage concerns about privacy to ensure long-term acceptance.
After all, many hikers might like the idea of auto-generating a highlight reel without much effort. But no one likes to be recorded without permission, especially while enjoying the great outdoors.
