A hidden facial recognition tool was discovered inside a companion app for Meta's smart glasses on June 4, and removed just one day later after the discovery became public.
The tool was found by Wired while reviewing code for a Meta AI app that handles core functions for the glasses, including pairing them to a user's phone over Bluetooth. Buried inside that same app was a dormant algorithm internally referred to as Name Tag. According to Engadget, the code contained algorithms that would have converted photos of faces into biometric identifiers, stored those identifiers on the device, and cross-referenced them against each new face scanned by the glasses.
On June 5, Meta released an update that removed the code entirely.
The existence of the feature was not entirely surprising. In February, The New York Times had reported that Meta was working to bring facial recognition to its glasses, and the internal name Name Tag appeared in that earlier reporting as well. The code found by Wired was likely the result of those efforts.
Meta vice president of communications Andy Stone gave a statement to Wired saying that the feature was only a pilot effort and that the company had not made a "final decision on what to do here, if anything."
The apparent purpose of Name Tag was to help users identify people they had previously met. That framing did not soften the reaction from privacy observers, who noted that such a system would also capture and analyze the faces of people who had no idea they were being scanned by a stranger's camera-equipped glasses.
Meta's smart glasses are produced in partnership with Luxottica brands including Ray-Ban and Oakley. The product has already attracted controversy on multiple fronts. Social media influencers have used the glasses to record and harass women in public. In December, a woman was accused of breaking a man's Meta glasses on the New York City subway. In March, Meta faced a class action lawsuit after a Swedish newspaper investigation revealed that workers in Kenya had been reviewing footage captured by the glasses, including footage of sexual intimacy and bathroom use, which appeared to have been recorded without the owners' knowledge.
The speed of both the removal and the public statement from Meta suggests the company was aware of how the discovery would land. Real employees were paid to write, review, and ship that code in a live product. The fact that it was never activated offers limited reassurance to people who wear the glasses and to the people those wearers encounter in daily life.
