Meta has embedded facial recognition components in its Meta AI smartphone app that powers its smart glasses. The feature remains inactive for now but has raised privacy concerns among experts.
An investigation by Wired found that Meta quietly added the code as early as January through updates to the app, which has been downloaded more than 50 million times. The internal feature called NameTag would convert faces seen by the glasses into biometric signatures known as faceprints and compare them against data stored on the user's phone. The Electronic Frontier Foundation confirmed the code through static analysis. EFF senior staff technologist Cooper Quintin said Meta appears to have created the capacity to turn customers into a distributed surveillance machine. Meta spokesperson Ryan Daniels stated that the code reflects tech exploration and that no decisions have been made to launch it. The company said it is not building a central face database and would approach any rollout with transparency if it proceeds. This development follows Meta's earlier shutdown of its Facebook facial recognition system in 2021 after a $650 million settlement over biometric data practices.
