- Code has been found to boost facial recognition in the Meta AI application
- This would allow Meta’s smart glasses to identify people’s faces
- The feature isn’t available yet and Meta claims it may never be available, but reactions are largely negative.
Meta smart glasses, such as the Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta Vanguard, have always been concerning from a privacy perspective, given their ability to photograph and film whoever the wearer is looking at. But they became even more worrying, as there is evidence that they could soon get facial recognition.
Wired (via Mashable) discovered that the company has been quietly adding facial recognition-related code to the Meta AI app over multiple updates this year.
Their research found references to three AI models, one that would detect faces, another that would crop them, and another that would encode them into biometric data. And although the feature is not available, two security researchers who reviewed Wired’s findings stated that it is almost ready to launch, if Meta decides so.
In response, a Meta spokesperson told Wired that “nothing has been sent to consumers and no final decision has been made about what to do here, if anything. If we decide to implement something, 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 database of faces.”
A privacy nightmare in the making?
Still, the fact that Meta is already adding relevant code to its app certainly suggests that a feature along these lines may be released. At that point, you not only have to worry about being photographed or filmed by people’s glasses, but also that they can identify you just by looking at you.
Responses to the news on Reddit are largely negative, but also not surprising given that we’re talking about Meta: a company that doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to respecting people’s privacy.
One Reddit user commented “is anyone surprised by this, really?”, and others said “well that tracks,” “I miss privacy,” and “it should be illegal,” among other negative comments.
And while Meta at least provides some measure of privacy with their smart glasses, such as showing a light when they’re recording or taking photos, modders can already disable that light, so it’s easy to imagine that any precautions implemented for facial recognition could also be disabled or bypassed.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to receive news, reviews and opinions from our experts in your feeds. Be sure to click the Follow button!
And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form and receive regular updates from us on WhatsApp also.
