The World Is on Fire and Meta Sees an Opportunity to Add Facial Recognition to Smart Glasses
Summary
Meta aims to leverage a dynamic political environment to implement a new surveillance network, raising concerns about privacy and data security. The publication highlights the implications of this strategy in the evolving landscape of digital surveillance.
Key Insights
What is Meta's 'Name Tag' feature and how would it work on Ray-Ban smart glasses?
'Name Tag' is Meta's internally codnamed facial recognition feature planned for Ray-Ban smart glasses that would allow wearers to identify people and retrieve information about them through Meta's AI assistant. The feature would work by analyzing faces the wearer looks at and surfacing identifying information and context via the glasses' AI capabilities. According to Meta's plans, the feature could identify people a user knows through Meta platforms or those with public accounts on Meta sites like Instagram, though it reportedly would not allow users to look up literally anyone they encounter.
Why has Meta delayed facial recognition on smart glasses, and what are the key privacy and safety concerns?
Meta originally considered adding facial recognition to its first Ray-Ban smart glasses in 2021 but abandoned those plans due to technical challenges and ethical concerns. The company has acknowledged that the feature carries significant 'safety and privacy risks.' Key concerns include the potential for misuse in profiling, surveillance, and harassment of bystanders who have not consented to being identified. The technology could enable doxing and unauthorized identification of strangers, as demonstrated in 2024 when Harvard students used Meta's Ray-Ban glasses with third-party facial recognition software to identify people on the Boston subway and retrieve their personal information including home addresses and phone numbers.