Meta Plans Facial Recognition Comeback Through Ray-Ban Smart Glasses

Meta Revives Facial Recognition With Smart Glasses

Meta is planning to bring facial recognition technology back to consumers through its Ray-Ban smart glasses, five years after shutting down its controversial face-tagging system on Facebook. The feature, internally called Name Tag, would allow wearers to identify people they encounter and retrieve information about them through Meta's AI assistant.

How Name Tag Would Work

The feature would not function as universal facial recognition. Instead, Meta is exploring approaches where the AI could provide information when it detects two users are linked on a social media platform such as Facebook or Instagram, or when users have public profiles on Meta's services. The company is considering launching the feature as soon as this year.

Meta is also developing super sensing glasses that would run cameras and sensors continuously to keep a record of someone's day, with facial recognition as a key feature. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has questioned whether the glasses should keep their LED indicator light on when using this mode.

Privacy Backlash and Legal History

The planned feature has drawn sharp criticism from privacy advocates. The American Civil Liberties Union warned that face recognition technology on the streets poses a uniquely dire threat to practical anonymity. Meta has already paid more than two billion dollars to settle biometric privacy lawsuits in Illinois and Texas that accused it of collecting facial data without user consent.

An internal memo from May 2025 acknowledged that the Name Tag feature carries safety and privacy risks, while noting the political environment in the United States would be advantageous for its release. The memo stated that many civil society groups expected to oppose the feature would have their resources focused on other concerns.

Commercial Momentum Drives the Push

The renewed push comes as Meta's smart glasses have become an unexpected commercial hit. EssilorLuxottica, which partners with Meta to manufacture the Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses, reported selling more than seven million units in 2025, more than tripling sales from the previous year. The companies are now discussing doubling production to at least twenty million units by the end of 2026.

The smart glasses face growing competition from Apple, Samsung, Snap, and OpenAI, all of which have announced their own wearable AI devices. Zuckerberg views facial recognition as a way to differentiate Meta's devices and make its AI assistant more useful.