SAN FRANCISCO: It's no secret Meta has been exploring facial recognition technology for its platforms, like Facebook. It's even cost the company millions in settlements.
But a new Wired report details how Meta secretly is going even further by integrating facial recognition software into an app linked to its glasses tech, despite the company recently stating it was still "thinking through" whether to release such a feature. Internally called "NameTag," the feature would create unique digital profiles of faces the Meta glasses camera captures, and notify wearers of people it "recognises," according to the report.
The feature itself is not available to consumers as the company is still exploring the technology, Meta spokesperson Ryan Daniels said in an emailed statement to SFGATE on June 5. He also called recent reports on the tech "sensational" and affirmed that the company is not "building a central face database."
"Nothing has shipped to consumers and no final decision has been made on what to do here, if anything," Daniel said. "If we do decide to roll something out, we will take a thoughtful approach and do so with full transparency."
Privacy experts have long warned that wearable tech like Meta's smart glasses pose security and privacy risks for those around the wearers. Integrating facial recognition would only deepen those concerns, as the feature would have to collect biometric information on unsuspecting individuals to work. It's the same concept that has caused Meta issues for more than a decade after the company rolled out a tagging suggestion feature in 2011.
In 2024, the state of Texas settled a lawsuit against the company for US$1.4bil (RM5.68bil) after it alleged Meta collected and stored biometric profiles of Texan residents without their consent. And three years earlier, the company settled a class action federal lawsuit for US$650mil (RM2.63bil) over the same feature.
Though Meta shut down the tagging feature in 2021, the New York Times in February reported on an internal Meta memo in 2025 that stated that the company was reconsidering exploring the technology. According to the report, referring to a smart glasses facial recognition feature, the memo said, "We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy organisation, said in a Thursday statement that it confirmed that the facial recognition code Wired published is "present and active," but not available to consumers. The nonprofit said the report "doesn't come as a surprise" given the reporting on the internal Meta memo.
"Despite the billions of reasons not to, Meta seems to have created the capacity to turn their customers into a distributed surveillance machine," the EFF said in its Thursday statement. "This is just one more reason to think twice before buying or using Meta's surveillance glasses."
Biometrics are considered sensitive personal data under the California Consumer Privacy Act, which has comprehensive regulations on data collection, including the right to know what specific personal data is being collected and who it's going to, and the right to opt out or delete it. The state even maintains a service called DROP that facilitates the deletion of state residents' information from data brokers.
Mario Trujillo, an attorney with EFF, said in an interview with SFGATE that it doesn't appear that there are any liability issues at the moment with the glasses facial reconstruction tech as it's not publicly available. However, actually rolling out the feature could create significant liability for the company, and raises the question of how the company would even go about getting consent from nonusers.
"I think while biometric laws aren't implicated at the moment, what Meta is doing is very ethically dubious," Trujillo said. – dpa
