According to reports, work may be underway to add facial recognition capabilities to Ray-Ban Meta “AI-powered” smart glasses, as well as the same class of earphones, equipped with cameras.
If and when this feature is added to the wearables – and articles based on a story published by The Information are careful to use “might” and “would” as qualifiers – depending on how it is implemented, it could raise significant privacy concerns.
One of them would be the ability to scan and identify people close to the person wearing the glasses while requiring no consent. Meta had the opportunity to incorporate facial recognition into the first generation of these smart glasses but decided against it.
The reporting about the alleged renewed consideration comes hand in hand with criticism of the current US administration by legacy and legacy-minded tech press, who appear to be trying to push the narrative about a regulatory environment that is now less privacy-friendly than before.
The Information is referring to internal Meta “discussions” about including what is reportedly at this stage known as the “SuperSensing mode.” More claims regarding how the future feature – might – work concern its opt-in nature, but only by the user of the glasses, and whether a light indicator should show that the “SuperSensing” is on.
According to the website, the technology would be built on “Live AI” which is already incorporated into the latest glasses and can scan and identify objects, items, and places for the wearer. But, clearly, not faces. Hence the alleged ambition to make this particularly sensitive – both from the public perception and regulatory angles – addition.
Without confirmation from the company, this currently comes across as speculation and conjecture about what Meta may or may not be considering – or developing. And the possibility of facial recognition making it into Ray-Ban Meta glasses is reported about along with the mention of the recent privacy policy changes.
Those changes have to do with providing more data for training Meta’s AI models by making it harder for users of smart glasses to avoid this.
