Meta Has Quietly Added Facial Recognition to Its Smart Glasses.
According to Wired , Meta has been quietly rolling out facial recognition functionality to its Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta smartglasses for the past few months. Internally called “NameTag,” the feature, when activated, will use artificial intelligence to identify people captured by the Ray-Ban Meta camera, alert the user when a person is detected, and store facial recognition data on users’ phones.
How does the Name Tag feature work in Meta?
The software isn’t yet activated, but if it is, it will use the Meta AI app to convert images of anyone photographed wearing the Meta glasses into a biometric facial fingerprint and compare it with the facial fingerprint database stored locally in the user’s Meta AI mobile app. If a match is found, the user will receive a notification. If not, the facial fingerprint will be placed in a folder named “pending.” This means that anyone the user encounters in public could become an unidentified target, waiting for their name to appear in a stranger’s personal database.
“This feature isn’t yet available to consumers, but it appears to be close to launch,” Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and senior public interest technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Threat Lab, told Wired. “Despite a million reasons not to, Meta appears to have created the potential to turn its clients into a distributed surveillance system.”
Back in February , documents obtained by the New York Times revealed that Meta was weighing the “security and privacy risks” of adding facial recognition to its smart glasses. In April, the company stated that it was taking a “very thoughtful approach” to the technology. But the first component of the facial recognition software was installed in January, without consumers’ knowledge (which, in my opinion, seems rather ill-advised).
However, the situation is more complicated. According to a company memo leaked to the Times , Meta’s potential strategy was to deploy facial recognition technology “in a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups we would expect to attack are focusing their resources on other issues.” In other words, Meta is well aware of the widespread opposition to facial recognition technology, but it appears determined to develop it anyway.
The unpopularity of facial recognition software in smart glasses
In April 2026, in response to a New York Times article, more than 70 organizations, including advocates for domestic violence victims, workers’ rights, bodily autonomy, consumer privacy, and civil liberties, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), demanded that Meta cease its plans to implement NameTag facial recognition technology. In an open letter, the coalition wrote: “Facial recognition technology embedded in discreet consumer eyewear poses a serious threat to privacy and civil liberties for every member of our society, and especially for historically marginalized and vulnerable groups.”
Privacy advocates aren’t the only ones who abhor the idea of facial recognition in smart glasses. According to a YouGov poll, nearly half of adults favor a complete ban on smart glasses in public places due to concerns about built-in cameras and internet connectivity.
Meta has a long history of working with facial recognition technology.
Despite widespread consumer discontent, Meta/Facebook has long used facial recognition and classification technology. Facebook identified and tagged people on its social media sites as early as 2010, but in 2021, the company abandoned this feature, citing “numerous concerns about the place of facial recognition technology in society.” This may have been facilitated by a $650 million class action settlement . In 2021, Meta discussed adding facial recognition to the first generation of its Ray-Ban smart glasses, but abandoned the idea, citing privacy concerns.
Meta representatives say you shouldn’t worry about what Meta is doing. “Regardless of the sensational reports, the facts are simple: we’ve said before that we’re exploring features like this, and what you’re seeing is simply confirmation of that research,” said Meta spokesperson Ryan Daniels. “Nothing has been shipped to consumers yet, and a final decision on what, if anything, to do next hasn’t been made. If we decide to implement something, we will do so thoughtfully and with full transparency. One thing we can say with certainty is that we are not creating a centralized face database.” However, Meta is laying the groundwork for the millions of private face databases it controls and administers.
While the dystopian implications of widespread facial recognition software are clear, this technology also has unrelated malicious applications. Some blind rights advocates, such as the nonprofit Vision Aid , argue that facial recognition is a matter of accessibility and social justice: the ability to recognize people’s faces is a privilege sighted people take for granted, and it shouldn’t be denied to the blind due to privacy concerns that can be addressed through legislation.
In theory, privacy protection and the needs of blind people (and people like me who don’t like the embarrassment of forgetting someone’s name at a cocktail party) aren’t mutually exclusive. In an ideal world, privacy regulations and laws would develop alongside technology, and companies that violate public trust would face real consequences. Unfortunately, we live in the real world, where our privacy is often protected only by strictures and left in the hands of Meta, which paid $650 million to settle a lawsuit over its facial recognition scheme and then immediately began developing its next one.