Face recognition in smart glasses may be closer than you realize

Ray-Ban Meta glasses are already facing fresh privacy questions after a report highlighted how modders are physically disabling the recording LED for covert filming. That’s unsettling enough, but hidden recording may not be the only concern around Meta’s smart glasses. According to a new investigation, Meta has already embedded code for an unreleased face-recognition system for its smart glasses inside the Meta AI app.

WIRED says it reviewed code in Meta’s live companion app and found references to a feature internally called NameTag, which appears designed to identify people seen by the glasses’ camera. The Meta AI app is used with the company’s Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses, and the app has been downloaded more than 50 million times.

The feature doesn’t appear to be enabled for consumers yet. However, WIRED reports that core components of the system were added to the app as early as January, including three AI models that now sit on users’ phones. One model detects faces, another crops them, and a third turns them into biometric data that can be checked against faceprints stored on the phone. If activated, the system would apparently alert the wearer when it recognizes someone. A May version of the app also appears to rebrand the feature as “Connections,” with user-facing text inviting people to “remember the people you met.”

Meta pushed back on the framing of the report. Company spokesperson Ryan Daniels told the publication that the findings are “merely evidence” that Meta is exploring these types of features, adding that “nothing has shipped to consumers and no final decision has been made.” Meta also said that if it does roll anything out, it will do so with full transparency, and that it is “not building a central face database.”

This isn’t the first time NameTag has surfaced. Back in February, The New York Times reported on internal Meta documents showing that the company had planned a face-recognition feature for its smart glasses, despite the privacy concerns. Those documents also reportedly described how the current “dynamic political environment” could leave critics of the feature preoccupied.

The underlying technology already present in the app people use with Meta’s smart glasses suggests a potential rollout is moving closer. The new report also says Meta had been publicly describing face recognition as something it was still “thinking through,” even as components of the system were being distributed to users’ phones.

None of this means NameTag is definitely rolling out, and Meta’s 2021 shutdown of Facebook’s earlier face-recognition system shows how fraught this territory already is. It’s easy to see how face recognition in smart glasses could be handy if it helps you remember someone you’ve met before. The understandable privacy concern is that recognizing an acquaintance isn’t the only possible use for this technology, and once that Pandora’s box is open, it could be very difficult to close it again.