Wired just published an investigation revealing that Meta has been quietly adding facial recognition code to its Meta AI app across multiple updates this year. The feature is internally called NameTag. It can identify people captured by the camera on Meta's Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses and alert the wearer when it recognises someone.

What the Investigation Found

The Wired investigation found three AI models already sitting inside the Meta AI app on the phones of everyone who has downloaded it. One model detects faces. One crops them. One encodes them into biometric data. Two independent security researchers who reviewed the findings told Wired that the app is, in their words, nearly ready to go. The feature has not been switched on for users. But the architecture for it is already there, installed quietly, without announcement.

This is not entirely new territory. The New York Times reported on Meta exploring facial recognition for smart glasses back in February, and Meta said at the time it would take a very thoughtful approach if it ever decided to release something like that. The difference now is that the code has been written, installed, and is sitting dormant on millions of phones globally. Including yours, if you have Meta AI installed.

Why This Matters in Nigeria

Nigeria has over 100 million active social media users and Meta's apps, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, are the backbone of digital communication for most of them. The Meta AI app is being pushed aggressively as Meta integrates AI across all three platforms.

If NameTag ever gets switched on, it would mean that anyone wearing Meta's smart glasses could point them at a person in public and potentially identify who they are in real time. At a market in Lagos. At a protest. At a church. At a political event. Without the person's knowledge or consent.

That is not a hypothetical privacy concern. That is a scenario with very specific risks in a country where surveillance, political targeting, and the intersection of tech and power have very real consequences for ordinary people.



What Meta Says

A Meta spokesperson said the company is not building a central facial recognition database and that no such feature has been released to consumers.

Less than 60 days ago, 70 organisations, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Fight for the Future, sent a letter to Meta urging the company to halt and publicly reject any plans to introduce facial recognition capabilities to its smart glasses. 

For now, the feature is dormant. But the presence of the code raises questions about how far Meta intends to take AI-powered wearable technology and where privacy safeguards will fit into that future. Whether facial recognition ever reaches consumers remains uncertain, but the debate has already begun.