Internal memos show that Meta is planning to seeze the moment of a “dynamic political environment” to bring their long-standing facial recognition feature to smart glasses without civil society groups protesting its ethics.
On Feb.13, the New York Times dropped a sensation about upcoming facial recognition plans for Meta smart glasses products. Notably, the social media mogul company is very well aware of the controversy behind such a feature, aiming to choose the best possible moment when the political turmoil both in the U.S. and globally would be so intensive that “many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” said the tech giant’s internal memo.
Since 2021, Meta has been actively developing a set of AI-powered wearable glasses. Those are made in collaboration with eyewear brands like Ray-Ban and Oakley. The models have a variety of embedded smart tech like built-in screen for visual overlays and augmented reality (AR) experiences, cameras, microphones, open-ear audio, speakers, and Meta AI tools. Some advanced prototype glasses like Aria Gen 2, featuring more cameras, sensors, and AI tools meant for research in machine perception and contextual AI are also a work-in-progress.
Meta has already tried to introduce a facial recognition service within its wearables ecosystem. However, both technical difficulties and publick backlash prevented the company from proceeding. Thus, in 2019 and 2021, Meta had to settle some FTC and individual lawsuits for allegedly harvesting facial data from users without their consent via its reportedly now-defunct facial recognition software on Facebook.
At the same time, as it appears from internal sources, the company didn’t give up on the plan entirely. It was just waiting for the right moment when tech readiness coinsides with favourable social and political environment. Apparently, this time is approaching since Meta is now reportedly working on a feature called “Name Tag” that could identify people seen through the glasses and provide info through AI. And, frankly, this news may have gotten past so many people as they are genuinely distracted by numerous tensions in both American and worldwide political and social agendas.
According to preliminary information, the face detection capability would be limited to identification of people users know through Meta social platforms or those having public profiles in the same networks. At the same time, consenting to people being able to come across one’s content without restrictions doesn’t necessarily mean the person would likely want anyone to potentially recognize them in the street and being able to extract all the publicly available information about them at once. That’s a huge difference and a big privacy gap in perspective, since methods how Big Tech companies start offering new services to users are often questionable, having weak or obscure opt-in and opt-out policies. A recent Amazon’s agentic AI shopping introduction without proper merchant consent is just one example.
At present, Meta hasn’t officially confirmed that the plans for facial recognition are finalized and claims that the team is going to “take a thoughtful approach if and before we roll anything out,” and yet the competition on the smart wearable and phygital market is growing, so the potential update is seen by many as a chance to preserve the marketing edge while millions of smart glasses units are sold in a year.
