Meta Is Planning to Bring Back Facial Recognition

According to a New York Times report, Meta plans to add facial recognition technology to its Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses. The feature, called “Name Tag” within Meta, would allow users to identify people and get information about them through Meta's AI. The feature could be rolling out as early as this year.

Adding the feature is not a done deal, however. According to an internal document cited by The Times, the company is weighing the “safety and privacy risks" of introducing facial recognition as well as discussing how to navigate the response to a no-doubt controversial feature.

A document quoted by The Times suggests Meta is deliberately timing a potential rollout to minimize scrutiny. “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” the document from Meta’s Reality Labs reads.

Meta's long history with facial recognition

This would not be the first time Meta dabbled in facial recognition. Meta debated adding facial recognition to the first generation of its Ray-Ban smart glasses in 2021, but decided against it due to privacy concerns. And Facebook, Meta's social media platform, identified and tagged people as early as 2010, but the company pulled the feature in 2021, citing "many concerns about the place of facial recognition technology in society.”

Concerns also include the risk of doxxing. The ACLU characterized facial recognition used by law enforcement as a "systematic invasion of privacy," though personal use of the technology raises different issues. Facial recognition glasses could enable instant doxxing, linking anyone's face to publicly available information, including social media profiles, addresses, and phone numbers.

Meta says it isn't planning to release a universal facial recognition tool. The company is considering glasses that identify only people a user knows based on their connection on a Meta platform, or only identify people who have a public account on a Meta site like Instagram. "While we frequently hear about the interest in this type of feature—and some products already exist in the market—we’re still thinking through options and will take a thoughtful approach if and before we roll anything out," Meta said in a statement.

The upside of smart glasses with facial recognition technology

Privacy concerns aside, the technology has genuinely beneficial applications, particularly to people with vision problems. According to The Times' report, Meta originally planned to introduce Name Tag to attendees of a conference for the blind before releasing it to the public, highlighting a group that could potentially benefit from facial recognition technology, though that plan was scrapped for unknown reasons.

Mike Buckley, CEO of Be My Eyes, an accessibility technology company that works closely with Meta, said he has been in discussions with Meta about facial recognition glasses for more than a year. “It is so important and powerful for this group of humans,” Buckley told The Times.

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