Meta removes nearly all traces of an unreleased face-recognition system, internally codenamed NameTag, from its Meta AI companion app used with its smart glasses. Reporting by WIRED found that parts of NameTag had been quietly embedded in software installed on millions of phones, even though Meta publicly said it had not made a final decision about whether face-recognition features would launch. The system was described as converting faces captured by glasses into biometric signatures, or “faceprints,” and comparing them with a faceprint database stored on the device. WIRED also reported that faces not recognized by the system were cropped, indexed, and stored locally for potential future processing.
After WIRED’s report, Meta denied that the timing was related to the publication, with Meta also describing the reporting as misleading. According to the follow-up reporting, Meta’s updated version of the Meta AI app removes the face-recognition software, the code for the recognition process, and related user-facing elements such as a “person recognized” alert. It also removes the app folder where cropped images and biometric signatures were stored. Some small remnants of NameTag code reportedly remain, such as internal debug labels and a dormant link, but they point to components no longer present.
