Meta Quietly Added Facial Recognition to Its Smart Glasses
“According to a report from Wired, Meta has been quietly installing facial recognition in its Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta smart glasses for the last few months. Internally called “NameTag”, the feature, if activated, will use AI to identify people captured by Ray-Ban Meta's camera, alert the wearer when it recognizes someone, and store faceprints on users' phones.”
Such technology could of course assist the sight impaired positively, but the bigger problem is two-fold.
Firstly, Meta is probably the Big Tech company I least trust out of all of them. I cancelled my WhatsApp account after they shifted their terms and conditions for the “Information We Share with Others” section which allowed sharing of metadata with (phone number, how you interact with others, mobile device information, IP address, location, etc) with third-party service providers. They have been repeatedly skirting over the edges of abuse of privacy and have been fined for it by the FTC, have appeared before the US Congress about it, and I've made numerous posts about their behaviour relating to user data.
Secondly they are in a country where it is quite legal for data brokers to buy private data and then resell it to anyone. Up to now that has mainly affected your own data that you choose to share, or not share, with Meta services. The not share refers to when they used the Facebook Pixel and other means to spy way deeper than just on actual Meta sites.
The big problem with AI glasses is that it can capture everyone everywhere without their knowledge, and the data is being processed by a company who cannot be trusted with private data, in a country that does not have any safeguards enforced over the privacy of personal data. What could possibly go wrong.
And if we don't yet get what this is about because of some form of patriotism for Western countries, think of the same technology being rolled out by ByteDance from China or VK in Russia. Would you trust it? Meta's track record has proven that it really cannot be trusted when it comes to handling metadata. It is not about the technology, but rather about what a company, and its governing country's record around privacy looks like.
What comes to mind is a saying often used, when something good just gets abuse, and ruins it for everyone else, and then the service/product gets banned: This is why we can't have nice things, because people break them.
Technology can be a force for great good, but it can also cause great harm.
See
Meta Quietly Added Facial Recognition to Its Smart Glasses
Meta's 'NameTag' feature, if turned on, will enable its Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta smart glasses store and match faceprints.
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