Meta Removes Unreleased Face-Recognition System From Smart Glasses App After WIRED Report
By
Dhruv Mehrotra, Dell Cameron
Hand-rolled, kettle-boiled, baked to perfection. Worth every minute at the bakery.
Summary
Meta removed an unreleased face-recognition system called NameTag from its Meta AI smart glasses companion app one day after WIRED reported on its existence. The system, which was embedded but unactivated in the app installed on over 50 million phones, included code libraries explicitly named for face recognition. The latest version of the app, released the day after WIRED's report, strips out all those components. Meta has not commented on why the system was removed or whether it will return.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledOne day after WIRED revealed that Meta had quietly embedded an unreleased face-recognition system into an app installed on more than 50 million phones, the company removed it, according to a WIRED analysis of the latest version's code.
The most recent version of Meta AI, a companion app for its line of smart glasses, strips out the unactivated software components that powered the system Meta internally called NameTag.
The version published the day of WIRED's report included several code libraries explicitly named for face recognition. Friday's release includes none of them.
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