Meta Silently Added Face-Recognition Code for Its Smart Glasses to Millions of Phones

Smart Glasses to Millions of Phones">

Meta has surreptitiously integrated face-recognition technology into its AI app, intended for use with its smart glasses, which has been downloaded over 50 million times. A WIRED analysis revealed that the code, internally referred to as "NameTag," allows the glasses to identify people captured by the camera and alert the wearer when it recognizes someone. The discovery shows that Meta had begun shipping face-recognition code to users' phones while publicly describing it as something the company was still "thinking through." In April, Meta said if it were to utilize face recognition, it wouldn't be rolled out without first taking "a very thoughtful approach." However, WIRED found that core components of the system had been integrated into software distributed to millions of people as early as January.

The NameTag feature transforms faces captured by Meta's glasses into unique biometric signatures, or faceprints, and checks them against faceprints stored on the user's phone—a database that's currently configured to receive updates from Meta. Recognized faces trigger notifications, while unrecognized faces are cropped, indexed, and saved to a folder marked "pending." This development revives a type of technology Meta claimed to have sunsetted in 2021, when the company announced it would delete over a billion faceprints belonging to Facebook users following controversy over its photo-tagging system. Meta ultimately paid $650 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by Illinois users and, in 2024, agreed to a separate $1.4 billion settlement with Texas over allegations it had unlawfully collected biometric data from users.

The renewed efforts arrive amid mounting opposition to consumer-level face recognition, with privacy advocates arguing it will give easy access to a potentially dangerous technology. Internal Meta documents published by The New York Times in February showed the company had planned to roll out the feature during a "dynamic political environment," when Meta believed its biggest critics would be preoccupied. "The feature is not yet exposed to consumers but seems nearly ready to go," says Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and senior public interest technologist with the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation's Threat Lab.

"Despite the billions of reasons not to, Meta seems to have created the capacity to turn their customers into a distributed surveillance machine."