Meta’s Planned Facial Recognition Feature for Smart Glasses Faces Opposition From Privacy Orgs

Meta's purported development of an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered facial recognition technology for its future smart glasses has raised concerns among privacy advocates. An open letter signed by 77 organisations working in the privacy and civil liberties space has been published, urging the Menlo Park-based tech giant to stop the development of such a feature. Notably, earlier this year, reports had claimed that Meta was developing a facial recognition feature that would allow its future smart glasses to detect and identify people around the wearer.

Organisations Urge Meta Not to Develop Facial Recognition Feature

An open letter signed by 77 organisations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Boston Teachers Union, and Free Speech Coalition has been published online. Directed to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the letter urges the company to “immediately halt and publicly disavow its plans to deploy facial recognition features on its Ray-Ban and Oakley glasses, including the feature reportedly known internally as Name Tag.”

To add context, earlier this year, reports claimed that Meta was developing a facial recognition technology dubbed Name Tag. It is said to use a live AI assistant that can automatically detect objects and people around the user. While it is not known how the company plans to build the dataset to recognise people, one possibility is using its massive user base's information across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Threads. But these are just speculations.

The open letter highlights that facial recognition poses a threat to privacy and civil liberties, especially for marginalised and vulnerable groups. It mentions issues such as stalking, harassment, and threats to life and livelihood that could be violated by the feature, even if there's an opt-out from it.

The group asks Meta not to release any facial recognition-related feature, and publicly disclose any known instances when its device was used in the context of stalking, harassment, or violence, along with steps taken to mitigate such instances.

In response, a Meta spokesperson told Engadget, “Our competitors offer this type of facial recognition product, we do not. If we were to release such a feature, we would take a very thoughtful approach before rolling anything out.”