Meta May Be Building Facial Recognition System for Its Smart Glasses

Meta appears to be building a facial recognition system for its smart glasses. The company has reportedly quietly embedded code within its Meta AI app used for Ray-Ban and Oakley glasses. This could allow the glasses to identify people using the built-in camera.

Researchers found face recognition code within the Meta AI app

According to a WIRED analysis, Meta has quietly added code to its AI app over multiple updates this year. The company internally calls the feature NameTag, which helps its smart glasses identify people. The feature uses the glasses’ camera to transform faces into a unique biometric signature (faceprints).

It searches the user’s phone for data to check each faceprint and trigger notifications for recognized faces. The report says that Meta has already deployed three AI models that power NameTag from its servers. One model detects faces, while another crops them from images. Meanwhile, the third model converts them into biometric data.

Earlier versions of the app called the feature “Connections,” which could help users “remember the people you met.” However, it’s unclear how the system will create user profiles and which faces it will keep.

As of now, Meta has not yet enabled the feature publicly. It describes the work as something it is “thinking through.” Now that the core components of the system have made it to the Meta AI app, we may hear about the feature in the coming months.

A Meta spokesperson said the company is only exploring such a feature. “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,” said the spokesperson.

We’ll let you know if more details about the facial recognition system surface on the web.