06/11/2026
The scenario sounds like every privacy advocate's worst nightmare, straight out of a Black Mirror script that was supposed to stay fiction. Code uncovered by journalists revealed that Meta quietly embedded facial recognition technology into its AI-enabled smart glasses. The unreleased feature, internally dubbed NameTag, would transform faces captured by Meta's glasses into unique biometric signatures known as faceprints and check each one against faceprints stored on the user's phone, a database currently configured to receive updates from Meta. The code has been sitting inside the Meta AI app, which has been downloaded more than 50 million times, since as early as January. The feature is not activated yet and not accessible to consumers. But the core components are already in place, quietly waiting on millions of faces.
Meta's leadership responded to the revelation not with patient explanation but with visible fury. Andy Stone, Meta's VP of Communications, called the reporting shoddy, intellectually dishonest, and pure advocacy-driven click bait. Andrew Bosworth, Meta's longtime CTO, jumped in to call the reporting incredibly misleading and absolutely dishonest. The company insisted that the code is merely evidence of exploration and that nothing has shipped to consumers. It also promised that if it decides to roll something out, it will take a thoughtful approach and do so with full transparency. But this is not the first time NameTag has surfaced. In February, The New York Times published internal Meta memos discussing plans to install the feature, with one striking suggestion that it should launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that would attack Meta would have their resources focused elsewhere. In April, 75 organizations signed an ACLU letter calling NameTag a red line society must not cross.
The facial recognition code is not the only scandal plaguing Meta's smart glasses. In a separate investigation, Swedish newspapers revealed that human contractors in Nairobi, Kenya, were reviewing footage recorded by the glasses, including deeply private moments: people un******ng, using the bathroom, and having s*x. Contractors told reporters that they saw everything from living rooms to naked bodies and that Meta terminated the deal with the subcontracting firm only after the story broke. Two class-action lawsuits have been filed over the practice, with plaintiffs saying they had no idea their videos were being shared for human review. Meta's terms of service do allow for human review of AI interactions, but the language is buried deep, and most users have never read it.
Meanwhile, the glasses are selling better than ever, with more than 7 million pairs now in circulation. Mark Zuckerberg has boasted that they are some of the fastest-growing consumer electronics in history. On social media, users are posting candid videos of strangers recorded without their knowledge, often tagged as having been taken by Ray-Ban Meta glasses. The small LED light that activates during recording is easily missed in daylight, and modders have already figured out how to disable it entirely. One massage parlour owner in Toronto discovered weeks after the fact that a customer had recorded her entire interaction and posted it to Instagram, where it attracted hundreds of likes. Meta initially told her nothing was being violated here. The Electronic Frontier Foundation put it most bluntly: Despite the billions of reasons not to, Meta seems to have created the capacity to turn their customers into a distributed surveillance machine.
