Meta is working on adding facial recognition technology to its smart glasses, according to a new report, revealing that the company is now ready to revisit a feature it previously abandoned over privacy concerns.
The New York Times spoke with four anonymous sources familiar with the plans, who said the feature carries the internal codename “Name Tag.” It would let people wearing Meta’s Ray-Ban or Oakley smart glasses identify others and pull up relevant information about them using artificial intelligence.
The new feature could potentially recognize people the wearer already knows through Meta’s apps or display public data from Instagram profiles. However, the sources stressed that universal facial recognition, which would let users identify anyone they encounter, will not be an option.
The technology brings clear privacy risks, which may explain why Meta held back on showing it at a conference for the blind community last year. The company also dropped plans to include facial recognition in the first version of its smart glasses when they launched in 2023.
But an internal memo from Meta’s Reality Labs, seen by the Times, suggests the company now sees a path forward. The memo noted that with the current political environment in the US, many groups that would typically push back on such a feature may have their attention elsewhere.
Meta sees facial recognition as a way to stand out as competition in the smart glasses space heats up, especially with companies like OpenAI working on rival products.
This would not be Meta’s first attempt at the technology. The company turned off its Face Recognition system on Facebook in 2021 following public backlash over how it handled user privacy especially in the automated tagging system.