A critical analysis of the ethical benefits and challenges related to the development and use of wearable AI devices

Abstract This article provides a critical analysis of the ethical benefits and challenges related to the development and use of wearable AI devices (‘wearables’). It does so primarily by means of a normative, conceptual analysis of recent systematic and scoping reviews on their ethical issues. We argue that wearables have already demonstrated great potential to improve people’s health and that their benefits are likely to expand significantly. However, we also argue that wearables present some ethical challenges and propose some ways to address these to ensure that their ethical costs do not outweigh their benefits. While we recognise that some challenges are tackled in some jurisdictions, for example through the Artificial Intelligence Act 2024 in the European Parliament and Council of the European Union, we are concerned that the development and use of wearable AI devices is still poorly regulated and argue that there is an urgent need to develop appropriate regulatory frameworks to deal with the challenges that we identify.