The central technical point is narrower than a consumer launch. WIRED reported that it reviewed code for an internal system called NameTag in the Meta AI app used with Meta smart glasses, including Ray-Ban Meta glasses. WIRED said the system was not enabled for consumers.
According to WIRED, the code was designed to convert faces captured by the glasses into biometric signatures, commonly called faceprints, and compare them with a database stored on a user's phone. A faceprint is a mathematical representation of a face used for recognition; it is not simply a photograph.
WIRED reported on 9 June that the latest Meta AI app version had removed the main code libraries and storage paths linked to NameTag. EFF's Threat Lab said it had verified the original findings through static analysis, a method of examining software code without running the app, and said Meta had stripped out face-recognition code after public scrutiny.
Meta's counter-position is available only through WIRED's reported exchanges with the company. WIRED reported that Andy Stone, Meta's vice-president of communications, said the feature was exploratory and that no final decision had been made. WIRED also reported that Meta did not answer questions about why the code was removed or whether the removal had been planned before publication.
The distinction matters because dormant code does not prove that Meta identified people in public through the glasses. It does show, according to WIRED and EFF, that a face-recognition pipeline had been present in a mass-market companion app before Meta had announced a shipped consumer feature.
Privacy concerns around smart glasses are broader than this one app update. The Texas attorney general said on 20 May that his office had opened an investigation into Meta AI Glasses over privacy representations and the devices' capacity to expose private data, recordings and facial geometry. That investigation concerns monitoring and data handling; it is not a finding that Meta broke the law.