Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has sacked a Kenyan data annotation firm after it was revealed that some of its workers had accessed sensitive content through the company’s artificial intelligence-powered smart glasses.
The revelation has raised concerns and prompted regulators to probe Meta’s AI privacy policy, with the fallout expected to be felt greatly on the ground.
The tech giant’s exit from Kenya’s business process outsourcing (BPO) industry will result in the layoff of over 1,100 workers at Sama, one of Nairobi’s key BPO players.
It could also deal a major blow to the country’s BPO sector, which relies heavily on its partnerships with a small number of United States-based technology companies.
Sama workers blew the whistle
In a February 2026 interview with the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (SvD), several Sama workers revealed that they could view and access sensitive content while annotating videos recorded by Meta AI smart glasses.
“We see everything – from living rooms to naked bodies,” one of the workers told SvD on condition of anonymity.
“In some videos, you can see someone going to the toilet or getting undressed,” he said.
“I don’t think they know, because if they knew, they wouldn’t be recording.”
The worker added that some video footage contained sensitive information, including private conversations and intimate moments that were accidentally recorded and sent to Meta’s databases.
“People can record themselves in the wrong way and not even know what they are recording.”
Regulators ask for transparency on Meta AI’s privacy policy
Following the news report’s release, a United Kingdom-based tech regulator has asked Meta to clarify its privacy policy.
“Devices processing personal data, including smart glasses, should put users in control and provide for appropriate transparency,” said the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in an interview with the BBC News.
The ICO asked Meta to clearly explain to its users what data is being collected by its products and how it is used.
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Meta hits back: ‘Human review improves AI’
Meta, in its UK AI terms of service, said that the company will review some of its users’ interactions with AIs, with some reviews “maybe automated or manual (human-reviewed).”
“When people share content with Meta AI, we sometimes use contractors to review this data for the purpose of improving people’s experience,” Meta explained.
The US-based tech giant said that other companies also outsource third-party services to enhance AI performance.
“Unless users choose to share media they’ve captured with Meta or others, that media stays on the user’s device,” Meta added.
Meta ends partnership with Sama
In an interview with BBC News, Meta said that it would be ending its partnership with Sama because “they don’t meet our standards.”
Sama pushed back against this allegation, reiterating that they have always met Meta’s operational, security and quality standards.
“At no point were we notified of any failure to meet those standards, and we stand firmly behind the quality and integrity of our work,” Sama said in a statement.
Before the dispute with Meta AI, Sama had previously worked with the company’s Facebook content moderation, which made headlines in 2023 after one of its former employees sued the tech company and its subcontractor for psychological damages.
Some of Sama’s former employees were reportedly suffering from psychological trauma after being exposed to harmful content while working at the company’s moderation hub.
Sama is one of the key players in Kenya’s BPO sector, an emerging digital outsource hub in East Africa.
With the end of its relationship with Meta, industry observers are expecting a “concentration risk” that could affect not only the company but also the country’s “impact sourcing” sectors, which serve as Africa’s entry point into the global AI technology boom.
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Kamille Q. Cabreza 
John Christopher Aquino 
Simon Wilkes