Meta Is A Planning A Terrifying New Upgrade For Its Smart Glasses

According to The New York Times, Meta is planning to add facial recognition features to its smart glasses, available from the company and its partnership with eyewear provider Ray-Ban. The smart glasses, if you didn't already know, look nearly identical to prescription eyewear — and can even be ordered with prescription lenses — meaning they look inconspicuous while worn. Embedded into the frames are cameras that can stream video live or record photos and video for sharing. By default, they display a small white light to show they're recording, so those nearby will know they're being observed. But there are workarounds to turn those lights off, making them appear like nothing more than conventional glasses.

The facial recognition feature, called "Name Tag," will allow the wearers of Meta's smart glasses to identify people around them and lookup information while using the built-in artificial intelligence assistant. While you're wearing the glasses you can ask that assistant to do various tasks through voice commands, like "Meta, start recording," or "Meta, tell me what this picture is." The issue, of course, is that even those who've reasonably attempted to shield their privacy and avoid these systems would be involved, by proxy, simply by users scanning or looking into their backgrounds.

Given the recent backlash and turmoil surrounding the Ring and Flock partnership to surveil and share security footage with law enforcement, it does raise questions about Meta and how it would employ or use data collected by users' smart devices.

Besides the obvious point that widespread facial recognition tech is an egregious breach of privacy for many, the technology itself is questionable. Other users around the Meta smart glasses wearer wouldn't be able to consent or opt-out. There are few examples that facial recognition is accurate, in fact, quite the opposite. The New York transport authority halted a pilot that had a 100% error rate with no accurate readings. Moreover, it's biased, can easily be manipulated for fraud and identity theft, is not properly regulated, and can lead to false arrests or worse when utilized by law enforcement. Meta may already be training AI with photos from users' smart glasses without telling anyone. That may include passerby and background subjects in captured imagery that don't want their photos used for such things.

Purportedly, Meta is looking to introduce the functionality in a "dynamic political environment," and while "many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns," according to internal documents. The original Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses were supposed to have similar facial recognition features, but the company ultimately changed course due to ethical concerns, alongside technical challenges. Meta also had a Face Recognition system planned for Facebook to tag users' photos, but scrapped that for similar reasons. It's a recurring theme and this current push is seemingly more of the same. If all goes as planned, the new features will be available to Ray-Ban users later in 2026.

Meta and Ray-Ban aren't the only companies making smart glasses like this. Rokid offers futuristic AR smart glasses with a screen, alongside a few other brands. Meta also partnered with Oakley to offer unique smart glasses.