A WIRED analysis found that Meta has incorporated facial recognition technology into apps that connect to the company’s smart glasses. The feature, called “NameTag,” was integrated into the app through several updates in 2026. It identifies people through the glasses’ camera and alerts the wearer when it recognizes someone, according to WIRED. Although the feature has not yet been enabled, NameTag relies on three AI models implemented through Meta’s servers and stored on users’ phones. “One model detects faces, one crops them, and a third encodes them into biometric data,” WIRED reported.  This discovery, identified by independent experts cited by WIRED, suggests that Meta has already distributed facial-recognition code to customers’ devices while publicly claiming it is still “thinking through” whether to deploy the technology. According to the New York Times, Meta said in February that it would not “roll anything out” before taking a “thoughtful approach.”  “While we frequently hear about the interest in this type of feature — and some products already exist in the market — we’re still thinking through options,” a Meta executive told the Times.  At the time, Meta’s smart glasses only activated their cameras when users took photos, recorded videos, or interacted with the AI assistant. The company, however, was also developing a feature known as “super sensing,” which would allow the cameras to operate continuously throughout the day. According to reports, facial recognition was a key component of that effort.  WIRED shared its findings with Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and senior public interest technologist with the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Threat Lab. Although NameTag is not available to consumers, Quintin said the feature appears “nearly ready to go,” with the core facial-recognition components “already in Meta’s companion app.”  “Despite the billions of reasons not to, Meta seems to have created the capacity to turn their customers into a distributed surveillance machine,” Quintin said. While a feature like this could benefit the blind, which is one of the reasons Mark Zuckerberg supported research into this field, it also poses significant dangers — especially when the company begins embedding this technology without altering its original statement. In April, more than 70 advocacy groups called on Meta to abandon Nametag, arguing it could allow stalkers and abusers to covertly identify strangers in public. Meta has denied that it is preparing to launch the feature. Spokesman Ryan Daniels said that despite what he described as “sensational reporting,” the company is merely “exploring” the technology. “Nothing has shipped to consumers and no final decision has been made on what to do here, if anything,” Daniels said. “If we do decide to roll something out, we will take a thoughtful approach and do so with full transparency. One decision we can be clear about—we are not building a central face database.”  However, WIRED reported that NameTag is capable of pulling faceprints from Meta’s servers and storing them on a consumer’s phone.   Meta previously faced scutiny over facial recognition technology used on Facebook. Beginning in 2010, the company deployed software that analyzed photographs and suggested tags for users who appeared in images. According to WIRED, the system became “one of the largest consumer face-recognition systems ever deployed.”  European regulators and U.S. privacy advocates raised concerns about the technology’s legality in 2011. In 2019, Facebook agreed to pay a record $5 billion settlement to the Federal Trade Commission as part of a broader privacy case that included scrutiny of the company’s handling of user data and facial-recognition practices.