Meta is reportedly working on facial recognition for its AI glasses

Trump 2.0 is gradually lengthening his shadow over the already murky–an adjective must be given to clean up the other half of this sentence–privacy landscape of technology. Meta, which held a very skeptical position on facial recognition, is now accelerating its efforts toward it for its second-generation wearables, according to The Information. Forget a Glasshole experiment that did not really work; these glasses will remember everyone around you. Is this innovation or invasion?

Imagine a world wherein your glasses barely whisper a name. Meta has reportedly been looking into using facial recognition software for the very same kind of smart glasses. The Information reveals that there have been discussions pertaining to technology capable of scanning faces and identifying those persons through the spoken word. But the innovation does not stop there: Imagine AI earphones, cameras included, doing the same. Is this the future of networking, or merely another step deeper into blanket surveillance?

Imagine a future in which your smart glasses do more than just store your memories; within a conceptual framework, they actuallyunderstandthe memories. Meta has this thing called super-sensing – it’s the big-brother, screaming-loud facial identification – to be cooked up for future glasses by Meta. It should be an immersive experience able to help oneself in real time, instead of a very quick snap. Current generation glasses hold out for some 30 minutes before the battery gives up, while some to-be-unearthed gossip from inside Meta rings in 2026 will see devices pumping juice for the “super sensing” to runhours.Is this the new dawn for hyper-personalized reality, or a full-blown privacy nightmare around the corner?

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

Imagine a world viewed through augmented eyes. The Information reports that these smart glasses will not automatically label every face you encounter. You, the wearer, can choose whether or not to activate a “super-sensing” mode. The creepy thing is that those around you get scanned and identified without giving their consent.

What is frightening is that it’s very possible that it’s happening to you at this very moment without you even noticing it. The Ray-Ban Meta, with a recording light (privacy safeguard inserted perhaps because of what maybe was a PR nightmare of Google Glasses), begs to ask: Does a minuscule LED really suffice to alert people around you?

But Meta is reportedly questioning whether future glasses should activate the light when the device is “super-sensing” them. Uh oh.

Goodbye sticky notes. Imagine artificial-intelligence-aided recall beamed into your eyeballs through some freudian, smart glasses operation. Amazing, right? Forget no more-a name, groceries, or keys. Yet, before queuing to enter the world with perfect memory, consider the ethical minefield. Kind of a double-edged sword when wearing those memory enhancement specs: they’d make you a genius, while everyone else just sees you as a walking, talking surveillance state. Welcome some more time for the “Metaholes” to rise.

Karissa Bell for Engadget

Meta’s working on crafting a privacy cocktail that you definitely don’t want to sip. A slight resurgence in the use of facial recognition technology has prompted the tech giant to quietly amend some of its policies. Do you remember those smart glasses? Well, due to policy changes, the AI is switched on by default for those! The only other option is to turn off the wake-up command “Hey Meta.” But hold on, there is more! Meta has also decided that they may use your voice recordings to train their AI systems, and you can no longer opt out of it. Well, consider this your privacy policy chaser-of-the-day-are-you-with-me?

Was Meta unethical in its compromises that paved the road for the return of Trump? The whispers are flying around as The Information connects the past scattered decisions of Facebook to potential future political arenas. Meanwhile, the FTC appears to have waxed the carpet for these corporate feet rather than placing itself on guard; Commissioner Holyoak ironically wants to maintain a “flexible” privacy regime that just so happens to be the right one for Big Tech’s bottom line. Now, with the ploy to wipe ‘surveillance advertising’ out of the FTC’s lexicon in full swing, the question looms: who is the FTC out to protect?

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