Smart glasses are pissing people off in a lot of ways right now, but arguably the most incendiary issue is Meta’s potential plan to add facial recognition to its Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses. If you caught wind of that possibility and thought to yourself, “Sounds bad,” you need not fear; Meta seems to think that if it were to dabble in facial recognition, it could do so in a “thoughtful” way.
In a statement made to Wired, a Meta spokesperson didn’t rule out the possibility of using facial recognition in its Ray-Ban-branded smart glasses, but stated that if it did, it would do so responsibly. Here’s the full comment:
“Our competitors offer this type of facial recognition product, we do not. If we were to release such a feature, we would take a very thoughtful approach before rolling anything out.”
That’s obviously not much to work off of, but it says a couple of things. One is that Meta doesn’t seem to be ruling out facial recognition, which is a major statement, especially because there are quite a few companies that take a more privacy-forward approach to smart glasses. Some of them, like Even Realities, don’t even put cameras or speakers in their smart glasses, which is a philosophical choice. That’s all to say that, if Meta wanted to, it could easily say “no” to facial recognition right now.
It also says that Meta is seemingly aware that the issue is a fraught one, and it definitely should know that by now. The comment made to Wired was given in the context of several civil rights groups, including the ACLU and Fight for the Future, making their feelings on Meta’s potential plans to add facial recognition to its smart glasses known. To no one’s surprise, none of those 70-ish civil rights groups is a big fan. Here’s an excerpt from an open letter to Meta:
“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, including domestic violence survivors, targets of stalkers and sexual harassers, religious minorities, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and women and children, among others.”
While Meta’s potential plans to add facial recognition to its smart glasses haven’t been confirmed, they’ve already created a lot of waves. Last month, congressional lawmakers also penned an open letter to Meta asking it to elaborate on the potential use of facial recognition in its smart glasses. Despite those pleas, Meta has been mostly silent.
For context, the New York Times was the first to detail internal plans, which Meta said “will launch 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,” according to the report.
Whether those will ever see the light of day is anyone’s guess, but if Meta’s recent comments are anything to go on, then it’s filed under “definitely maybe” for now.
