Meta could soon bring facial recognition to its smart glasses — what could go wrong?

If you grew up on ’90s sci-fi, you’ll remember the moment when a malevolent mechanoid’s visor locks onto someone, and their name and other personal details flicker into view. Fast forward a few decades, and something not far from that scenario could be coming to a pair of smart glasses near you.

According to a report from The New York Times, Meta is planning to add facial recognition to its smart glasses as soon as this year. The feature, internally dubbed “Name Tag,” would reportedly let you identify people you’re looking at and pull up information about them through Meta’s AI assistant. The glasses are made in collaboration with the owner of brands like Ray-Ban and Oakley.

The New York Times cites four people involved in the plans who weren’t authorized to speak publicly. An internal document viewed by the publication shows Meta has been weighing how to release the feature despite what it calls “safety and privacy risks.” One proposal suggested debuting it at a conference for blind attendees before a wider rollout, though that didn’t happen last year. The plans could still change.

If Meta did introduce facial recognition, what’s unclear is who the glasses would actually be able to identify. It’s not yet known whether Name Tag would work only for people on your contacts lists from Meta-owned social media sites like Instagram and Facebook, or for people you don’t know who have submitted a photo to those platforms. Recognizing an old friend is one thing; recognizing strangers on the street is another.

We’ve already seen how quickly that line can blur. In 2024, two Harvard students demonstrated how the Ray-Ban Meta glasses could be turned into a facial recognition tool using livestreaming and AI. Their project, I-XRAY, matched faces to publicly available data and surfaced names, phone numbers, and home addresses. The students said they wouldn’t release it, but the demo showed how discreet smart glasses could double as a doxing tool.

Facial recognition has long alarmed privacy advocates and lawmakers. Nathan Freed Wessler of the American Civil Liberties Union told The New York Times that, “this technology is ripe for abuse.” This would also mark a notable reversal. Five years ago, when it was still Facebook, Meta itself shut down its facial recognition system for tagging people in photos, saying it needed to find “the right balance” for a technology that raised legal and privacy concerns. Bringing that capability to wearable glasses would take it out of photo libraries and into real-world interactions.

But the climate has changed considerably in the last five years, and there are suggestions that Meta’s U-turn on this issue now may not be a coincidence.  An internal memo from Meta’s Reality Labs division reportedly suggested that the “dynamic political environment” in the US could make it a favorable time for the feature’s launch, as civil society groups that might criticize it could be focused on other issues.