Meta’s smart glasses are under renewed privacy scrutiny after code found inside the Meta AI app showed an unreleased facial recognition capability called NameTag, which could use faceprints to identify people seen through the glasses’ camera.
TL;DR
- WIRED found unreleased facial recognition code inside Meta’s AI companion app.
- EFF’s Threat Lab confirmed the code through static analysis.
- Meta says the feature is not active and no final consumer rollout decision has been made.
- Privacy advocates warn the system could normalize biometric identification without bystander consent.
Meta’s smart glasses may not currently offer facial recognition to consumers, but newly discovered code suggests the capability is already sitting inside the company’s software.
According to a WIRED investigation, Meta quietly added components for an unreleased facial recognition system, internally called NameTag, to the Meta AI companion app used with its smart glasses. The app supports key functions for Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley smart glasses and has reportedly been downloaded more than 50 million times.
The feature is not turned on for consumers, but the code reportedly shows how Meta’s glasses could identify people seen through the device’s camera. WIRED said the system is designed to detect faces, crop them, encode them into biometric data, and notify the wearer when a recognized person appears.
This is where the privacy concerns intensify.
If activated, the feature could convert faces captured by Meta’s glasses into biometric signatures, often known as faceprints. The system would compare captured faces against faceprints stored on the user’s phone, with the database reportedly configured to receive updates from Meta.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Threat Lab said it verified the presence of the code through static analysis. EFF warned that such a feature could turn ordinary smart glasses users into participants in a distributed surveillance network, especially because people standing nearby may not know they are being scanned.
Meta has pushed back on the idea that the discovery confirms a public launch. The company said no facial recognition feature has shipped to consumers, no final decision has been made, and it is not building a centralized face database.
Still, critics argue that the code’s presence matters, even if the feature is inactive.
Smart glasses are different from phones because they can capture photos, videos, and audio from the wearer’s point of view, often without the same visible social cues that come with holding up a smartphone. Adding facial recognition to that form factor could make it easier to identify people in public without their knowledge or consent.
Privacy groups had already sounded the alarm before this code discovery. Earlier this year, more than 70 organizations, including the ACLU and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, urged Meta not to add facial recognition to Ray-Ban smart glasses, warning that such a tool could expose people to stalking, harassment, doxing, and unwanted law enforcement tracking.
The concern is also tied to Meta’s past use of biometric technology. In 2021, Meta said it would shut down Facebook’s facial recognition system and delete more than one billion face templates. Reports also point to Meta’s earlier biometric privacy settlements, including a $650 million class-action settlement in Illinois and a $1.4 billion settlement in Texas.
Earlier this year, more than 70 organizations, including the ACLU and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, urged Meta not to add facial recognition to Ray-Ban smart glasses, warning that such a tool could expose people to stalking, harassment, doxing, and unwanted law enforcement tracking.
For Meta, the tension is clear. AI glasses are becoming a major part of its wearable computing strategy, and face recognition could make the devices more useful for memory, accessibility, and social context. However, the same feature could also make public anonymity harder to protect.
For now, NameTag remains unreleased. Yet the discovery has already reopened a difficult question for the smart glasses industry: can AI wearables become personal assistants without turning everyone nearby into biometric data?
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