Meta Plans To Let Smart Glasses Identify People Through AI-Powered Facial Recognition

Source: Slashdot

Facial Recognition Feature for Ray‑Ban Smart Glasses

Meta plans to add facial recognition technology to its Ray‑Ban smart glasses as soon as this year, according to a report by the New York Times on Friday. This comes five years after the company shut down facial recognition on Facebook and pledged to find “the right balance” for the controversial technology.

The feature, internally called “Name Tag,” would let wearers identify people and retrieve information about them through Meta’s AI assistant. An internal memo from May acknowledged that the feature carries “safety and privacy risks” and noted that political tumult in the United States could distract civil‑society groups that might otherwise criticize the launch.

Meta is exploring restrictions that would prevent the glasses from functioning as a universal facial‑recognition tool, potentially limiting identification to:

• People connected on Meta platforms, or
• Those with public accounts.