- Meta has been urged to remove its rumored nametag feature
- In an open letter, privacy advocates said facial recognition technology is dangerous.
- Meta has yet to announce Name Tag, but a statement suggests the feature could still be available on Ray-Ban glasses.
More than 70 organizations are calling on Meta to cancel its controversial Name Tag AI glasses feature plans, fearing it could increase the threat from stalkers and abusers.
While it hasn’t been officially announced yet, a report surfaced last year suggesting the company wants to develop an always-on AI system with the ability to recognize people’s faces and other details about their lives, like where they left their keys. The story was amplified earlier this year when The New York Times reaffirmed Meta’s rumored plans.
What’s more, the NYT report included a leaked memo from Reality Labs that suggests Meta knows the tool is controversial, as it apparently plans to launch Name Tag “during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.”
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The document also highlighted possible plans to launch the tool at a conference for the blind to help promote it as an accessibility tool.
Despite some potential advantages of Name Tag, several organizations, including the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, have signed an open letter urging Meta to protect the public’s privacy by never publishing Name Tag or a similar feature.
“Facial recognition technology embedded in discreet consumer glasses represents a serious threat to the privacy and civil liberties of all members of our society, and particularly historically marginalized and vulnerable groups,” the letter explains.
He added: “People should be able to go about their daily lives without fear of stalkers, scammers, abusers, federal agents, and activists from across the political spectrum silently and invisibly verifying their identities and potentially matching their names against reams of readily available data about their habits, hobbies, relationships, health, and behaviors.”
In response, Meta issued a statement saying: “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 implementing anything.”
The problem some may have with that answer is that Meta doesn’t promise to ever introduce facial recognition into its specs, just that it would do it the right way. However, this is because Meta contractors are reported to be seeing many more photos and videos of our AI smart glasses than we could have imagined.
This second era of smart glasses has so far managed to avoid the major privacy complaints that plagued Google Glass, but that has changed. If Meta, Google, and even possibly Apple want to get things back in a more positive direction, they need to be careful and offer stronger assurances that they are taking the public seriously.
Smart glasses are still a novelty: fun but arguably much less useful than our phones, smartwatches and headphones. If public reaction continues to grow, a second drop in smart glasses is likely, and I say this as someone who thinks the technology could be amazing and would like to see it flourish.
We just need to make sure that privacy protections are taken seriously. Otherwise, I imagine it won’t be long before governments or the public start taking action.
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