A new report indicates the Meta Ray-Ban companion app is capable of face recognition and is designed to identify users from images and videos taken on its paired smart glasses.
The report comes courtesy of WIRED, which did a deep dive into the Meta AI app to uncover a buried, unreleased AI feature called “NameTag.” The feature is able to recognize faces captured on Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, process them, and alert users when familiar faces are present.
The report states that NameTag has been in ongoing construction over a period of several recent updates this year, sometime after Meta announced the new display variant. Meta AI acts as the companion app and connects device functions to the glasses. That gives the glasses necessary access to the internet and, further, Meta AI’s backend processing.
The glasses can’t be used without the app, which means the face recognition feature is already embedded into just about any device connected to a pair of Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses. It appears Meta stores recognized facial data on user devices after faceprints are pulled from the company’s servers.
WIRED’s report notes that Meta claimed it was “thinking through” the prospect of a facial recognition feature back in April. Following the updates where NameTag’s foundation was laid, that feature seems to date back to as early as January. In theory, if users hadn’t updated the Meta AI app since then, NameTag may still be embedded.
