Wired recently reported that a fragment of code inside the companion app for Meta’s smart glasses appears to have been written for a face‑recognition feature. The discovered component was named "Name Tag," and analysts said it suggested the app could, in principle, scan faces of people near the glasses wearer.
Experts located the Name Tag fragment on June 4 in the Meta AI source code. Meta AI handles some basic functions for the company’s smart glasses; as Engadget noted, that meant the app used to connect the glasses and a phone over Bluetooth could technically have been set up to perform face recognition. Wired emphasized that, although the code itself was not currently operational, its existence raises significant privacy and ethical concerns.
Meta acted quickly: on June 5 the company issued an update that removed the code fragment from the app — less than 24 hours after the discovery. The New York Times had reported in February that Meta was developing face‑recognition for its smart glasses and referred to the project as Name Tag; the newly found code appears to be related to that effort.
According to the code, the intended purpose of the feature would have been to help users recognize people they had met before — which could be helpful for forgetful users or people with dementia. At the same time, the prospect of such functionality is deeply worrying in most other contexts due to privacy and surveillance implications.
Andy Stone, Meta’s communications vice president, said the Name Tag feature was experimental and that no decision has been made about deploying it. The company’s rapid removal of the code and public comment indicate an awareness of how contentious such a capability would be.
Why this matters
The episode highlights how quickly technical capabilities in wearable augmented‑reality devices can become social and ethical issues. Even if a code fragment is not operational or deployed, its presence in source code signals that developers have contemplated the capability — and that companies need to consider user trust and regulatory scrutiny when experimenting with such features.
Meta’s update and explanation have for now quelled immediate concern, but the underlying question remains open: how will the company decide to balance face recognition and wearable technologies going forward?
