This "could become" sounds exactly like when you look at a cool robotics project, and when you ask the researcher what it could be used for, they say "it could be used for search & rescue after a natural disaster".

The truth is that it's cool research that currently has zero use-case. But a) journalists would not write about that and b) researchers may try to use examples to explain what their research does. Probably researchers are tempted to find a cool use-case of course, because it's better for them if journalists write about their research.

This sounds like cool research that is not remotely close to becoming an invisible mass surveillance system.