Meta Deletes Face-Recognition System From Its Smart Glasses App After WIRED Report

[highplainsdem]

Source: Wired

One day after WIRED revealed that Meta had quietly embedded an unreleased face-recognition system into an app installed on more than 50 million phones, the company removed it, according to a WIRED analysis of the latest version’s code.

The most recent version of Meta AI, a companion app for its line of smart glasses, strips out the unactivated software components that powered the system Meta internally called NameTag. The version published the day of WIRED’s report included several code libraries explicitly named for face recognition. Friday’s release includes none of them.

On Thursday, WIRED reported that Meta had quietly integrated substantial portions of the NameTag system into the Meta AI app. Though never publicly enabled, the feature was designed to convert faces captured by the glasses into unique biometric signatures, commonly known as faceprints, and compare them against a database of faceprints stored on the user's device. WIRED also found that faces the system failed to recognize were cropped, indexed, and stored locally for future processing.

NameTag first surfaced in February, when The New York Times, citing internal Meta documents, reported that the company was developing face recognition for its smart glasses and weighing a launch as soon as this year. One memo reportedly described releasing it during a “dynamic political environment,” when privacy and civil liberties advocates would be distracted. Last week, WIRED reported that much of NameTag’s machinery was already built into the Meta AI app, downloaded by millions of users, as early as January, even as Meta publicly said it had made no final decision about face recognition.

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Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/meta-removes-face-recognition-code-meta-ai-app-smart-glasses/

[LearnedHand]

1. THIS time they deleted it

That slimy fucking nazi will move right ahead with it as soon as the news cycle moves on.

[0rganism]

2. Yeah, we'll just pop that djinn right back in the bottle, problem solved permanently, cause for celebration, eh? Flex!

And forever after, every year on June 5, all the humans gathered to celebrate the complete removal of the clandestine app installed to 50 million phones, and rejoiced that never again would anyone have concern they might be secretly recognized and tracked by some evil tech oligarch's automated identification system.

Yeah, we good. Nothing to see here, please move along, don't hold up the line.

[Quanto Magnus]

3. I will never buy

a pair of these...

Meta wants to spy on everyone.... no thank you

[Karasu]

4. If they want us to believe this gesture is sincere, kill the smart glasses. Period. Zero reason they should be legal.

They're just a gift to surveillance state fascists, stalkers, and pedophiles. No good can come of this shit.

[electric_blue68]

5. Oh, suuuurrre...for now!

Wouldn't buy them anyway!

[ananda]

6. The app never made it to my phone.

I don't know why.

Not complaining.

[Grins]

7. The unanswered question: Why did they do this deception?

For what purpose?
For whose gain?