According to a report from Wired, Meta has been quietly installing facial recognition in its Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta smart glasses for the last few months. Internally called “NameTag”, the feature, if activated, will use AI to identify people captured by Ray-Ban Meta’s camera, alert the wearer when it recognizes someone, and store faceprints on users’ phones.
The software has not been switched on, but if it is, it will use Meta’s AI app to transform images of anyone photographed with Meta glasses into a biometric faceprint, and check against a database of faceprints stored locally on the user’s Meta AI mobile app. If it finds a match, the user will be notified. If it doesn’t, the faceprint will be indexed into a folder named “pending.” So everyone who the wearer encounters in public could become an unidentified target waiting for a name in a stranger’s private databases.
“The feature is not yet exposed to consumers but seems nearly ready to go,” Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and senior public interest technologist with the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Threat Lab told Wired. “Despite the billions of reasons not to, Meta seems to have created the capacity to turn their customers into a distributed surveillance machine.”
Back in February, documents obtained by the New York Times revealed Meta was weighing the “safety and privacy risks” of adding facial recognition to its smart glasses. In April, the company said it was taking a “a very thoughtful approach” to the technology. But the first component of facial recognition software was installed in January, without consumers being aware of it (which seems less than thoughtful to me).
It goes deeper than that, though. According to the company memo leaked to the Times, Meta’s potential strategy was to roll out facial recognition “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.” In other words, Meta is well aware of the general disdain for facial recognition, but seems intent on developing the technology anyway.
The unpopularity of facial recognition software in smart glasses
In April 2026, in response to the New York Times’ story, over 70 organizations, including advocates for domestic violence survivors, worker rights, bodily autonomy, consumer privacy, and civil rights, and the ACLU, demanded Meta halt its NameTag facial recognition plans. In an open letter, the coalition wrote: “Facial recognition technology built into inconspicuous consumer eyewear represents a serious threat to privacy and civil liberties for every member of our society, and particularly for historically marginalized and vulnerable groups.”
Privacy advocates aren’t the only people who hate the idea of facial recognition in smart glasses. According to a YouGov survey, nearly half of all adults are in favor of a total ban on all smart glasses in public places due to concerns over built-in cameras and internet connectivity.
What do you think so far?