Since WIRED reported on Meta’s NameTag face recognition technology, the company’s executives have made ambiguous and contradictory statements regarding its existence.
The central question is: does a feature exist if its code is embedded in the devices of millions but is not accessible to users yet? Meta executives have been engaged in this semantic debate concerning NameTag, the face-recognition system designed for their smart glasses. The confusion arose after WIRED discovered that the Meta AI app, the companion for the Meta Ray-Ban glasses, contained extensive but inactive code for NameTag.
On June 4, WIRED revealed that the NameTag feature was seemingly present in the app as early as January, with The New York Times highlighting Meta’s work on it by mid-February. Following the report, Meta Vice President of Communications, Andy Stone, responded by stating, “the feature doesn’t exist!” and the next day, Meta removed the NameTag code from the app.
However, analysis of the app revealed that while NameTag’s functionality was not enabled for public use, a working face-recognition system did exist within the app. A researcher, Buchodi, was able to use this system to recognize a photograph of French philosopher Michel Foucault.
On July 8, Meta CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth discussed the potential of NameTag in detail on a podcast, thereby contradicting Stone’s assertion that the feature didn’t exist. He described how the system would recognize people met in person while wearing the glasses, leading to further confusion about its current status.
Meta has maintained that Bosworth’s comments were hypothetical, emphasizing the conditional language—“would be a great feature”—to clarify that the feature hadn’t been made available yet. Bosworth has underlined that NameTag would not rely on a central database, a point raised in response to concerns regarding privacy laws like Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).
The distinction between local and central data storage is crucial in discussions about legality and user privacy. By keeping face recognition data on users’ devices rather than in a central server, Meta may position itself to comply with various state laws, even though the overall legality of this approach still involves legal challenges and uncertainty.
Moreover, WIRED’s inquiries into NameTag’s functionality, opt-in status, and data retention have mostly gone unanswered by Meta, highlighting the ongoing ambiguity surrounding the feature. Ultimately, it appears that a functional face-recognition system has been built into the app, leading to the critical question: does NameTag truly exist? The answer seems to lie in the interpretation of existence within the technological realm.
For further details, you can explore the implications and intricacies of face recognition technology on Meta’s future.
