Meta Plans Facial Recognition for Ray-Ban Smart Glasses This Year

SAN FRANCISCO: Meta plans to add facial recognition to its Ray-Ban smart glasses as soon as this year, the New York Times reports, citing four people with knowledge of the plans. The feature, internally called “Name Tag,” lets wearers identify people in their field of view and pull up information about them through Meta’s AI assistant, a capability the company itself acknowledges carries “safety and privacy risks” in internal documents.

The move marks a significant reversal. Meta shut down its Facebook photo-tagging facial recognition system in 2021, citing concerns about finding the right balance on a sensitive technology.

It also considered and rejected adding the feature to the first generation of Ray-Ban Meta glasses that same year over technical and ethical hurdles. Now, with its smart glasses selling well and AI capabilities expanding rapidly, the company is revisiting the idea.

Meta is also developing a separate “super sensing” mode for future glasses that would run cameras and sensors continuously throughout the day, similar to how AI note-takers summarize meetings with facial recognition serving as a core feature to identify colleagues and trigger contextual reminders.

The announcement reignites longstanding privacy concerns. In 2024, two Harvard students demonstrated that Ray-Ban Metas paired with a commercial facial recognition tool could identify strangers on the Boston subway in seconds.

The ACLU warns the technology poses a threat to the practical anonymity people rely on in public spaces. Meta’s position is further complicated by its history, including billions paid in settlements and ongoing controversies like legal challenges tied to its smart glasses capturing private footage. The company has paid more than $7 billion to settle privacy lawsuits related to facial data collection, and quietly relaxed its internal privacy review process in January 2025, giving product teams more authority to ship features faster.