Meta’s AI app now includes facial recognition code for its smart glasses, despite the company’s previous assurances that it had not decided whether to introduce the technology.
An analysis of the company’s AI app by Wired uncovered “an unreleased face-recognition system embedded in Meta’s smart glasses platform” designed to identify people whose biometric data has been stored on the wearers’ phone.
When Meta’s smart glasses detect someone known to the wearer, a notification will appear on the wearer’s phone. All other faces are cropped, indexed and saved to a “pending” folder.
The feature, known internally at Meta as “NameTag,” was quietly added to the AI app in multiple updates that appear to have begun as early as January. Meta said in April that the company was still “thinking through” the decision and would not move forward without first taking “a very thoughtful approach.”
The Meta AI app has been downloaded more than 50 million times. In a statement to Wired, Meta spokesperson Ryan Daniels pushed back on the outlet’s findings.
“Regardless of any sensational reporting, the facts are simple: We’ve said before we’re exploring these types of features, and what you’re seeing is just evidence of that exploration. Nothing has shipped to consumers and no final decision has been made on what to do here, if anything. If we do decide to roll something out, we will take a thoughtful approach and do so with full transparency. One decision we can be clear about — we are not building a central face database.”
Ryan Daniels, Meta spokesperson
Andy Stone, Meta’s vice president of communication, likewise suggested in a post to X that the company’s inclusion of the code to its AI app was merely exploratory. Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer, also described Wired’s reporting as “incredibly misleading” and “absolutely dishonest.”
A leaked internal memo from May of last year, however, showed that Meta suggested introducing facial recognition to its smart glasses during a period when civil society groups would be too distracted to push back.
Civil liberties concerns
A security researcher known online as Buchodi, who reviewed Wired’s findings, said the facial recognition feature appears near complete.
“The main components of a face-recognition feature are already in Meta’s companion app,” Buchodi said. “Not many pieces stand between this and a working feature.”
In April, more than 70 civil liberties groups called on Meta to scrap its plans to bring facial recognition to its smart glasses over fears of abuse.
Meta deployed a similar feature to Facebook in 2010 that used facial recognition to suggest tags for people who appeared in users’ photos. The feature proved controversial, and after collecting more than a billion face prints, Facebook ended the feature in 2021.
Facebook ultimately paid out $2 billion to settle class-action lawsuits that argued the company had unlawfully collected users’ facial data.
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