Meta plans to bring facial recognition to smart glasses

Theo New York Times, The feature, internally named Name Tag, allows glasses wearers to identify the person in front of them and look up some basic information through Meta’s AI assistant. The plan could be implemented as early as this year, but is still in the discussion stage.

Name Tag is not designed to identify everyone a user sees. Instead, Meta prioritizes identifying people with whom glasses wearers are connected on its platforms, like Facebook or Instagram. The company is also considering the possibility of identifying people with public accounts on Meta services, even if the user is unfamiliar.

An internal document from May 2025 shows that Meta assessed this feature as a potential “security and privacy risk”, so the company carefully considered when and how to launch it. In the document, Meta identified the volatile political context in the US as a “favorable period” to launch the feature.

Meta once planned to integrate facial recognition into the first version of Ray-Ban Meta glasses, but canceled the plan due to technical difficulties and concerns about AI ethics. This idea was revived in the context of smart glasses achieving positive business results, with more than 7 million units sold in 2025, according to the company’s previously announced data.

Previously, Meta many times faced reactions from the community related to facial recognition technology. In 2017, Facebook deployed this technology to automatically suggest tagging people in photos. By 2021, the company announced it would stop using it, saying it was necessary to find “the right balance” between technological benefits and privacy.

Recent reports show that Meta is expanding the “sensing” capabilities of smart glasses, including researching an always-on camera mode to observe the surrounding environment, track activities and support AI to recognize context.

Experts evaluate facial recognition technology on glasses as beneficial for people who are blind or have low vision, helping them recognize the other person. However, connecting this technology with social networks and large databases also increases the risk of abuse and invasion of personal privacy.

Respond to The VergeMeta spokeswoman Erin Logan said the company is “carefully considering” options and “only deploys after fully considering all factors” even though this is a feature that many users are interested in.