Here’s the Truth About Whether Meta’s NameTag Face Recognition Tech ‘Exists’
Does a software feature exist if its code has been deployed to the devices of millions of people but they can’t use it yet? Not
Does a software feature exist if its code has been deployed to the devices of millions of people but they can’t use it yet? Not if you work at Meta. The company’s executives have spent the last few weeks making this semantic argument about NameTag, the in-development face-recognition system that Meta built for its smart glasses. The inevitable result is confusion, but that’s easy enough to clear up. On June 4, WIRED reported that Meta included robust—but inactive—code for NameTag in Meta AI, the companion app for Meta Ray-Ban glasses that has been downloaded tens of millions of times. In response to our story, Andy Stone, Meta’s vice president of communications, responded in part by writing on X, “Here's a thing: Wired reports Meta didn't answer several questions about how this will work. How could we? The feature doesn't exist!” Meta removed the NameTag code from Meta AI the next day. According to WIRED’s analysis of the Meta AI app, code for NameTag appeared in the app as early as January.
In mid-February, The New York Times reported that Meta had been working on NameTag face recognition. By May, WIRED found, the core components of the NameTag code were present in the MetaAI app. Whether the feature existed prior to Meta removing the code depends on how one defines “feature” and “exist.” Whatever one’s position, a researcher who goes by the name Buchodi reviewed the code at WIRED’s request, and was able to use the NameTag system to recognize a photograph of the face of the philosopher Michel Foucault, famed for his writing on surveillance as an instrument of power. The claim that Meta had no way of describing how the feature works—or even would work—was further undercut last week, when Meta CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth did so in detail on a podcast. On the July 8 episode of the The Most Interesting Thing in AI, host Nicholas Thompson—CEO of The Atlantic and a former WIRED editor in chief—asked who NameTag would identify during a part of the discussion labeled “What’s true and false about NameTag.” Bosworth replied: “Somebody you met in person with your glasses on who introduced themselves—or you said, ‘OK, this is David, remember this person.’ Only available to you when you’re wearing your glasses—this is a person you’ve met before.
Here’s their name. They’re right in front of you … That’s what we call a NameTags feature.” Bosworth later said of NameTag, “So, it's a thing that, um—I think would be a great feature.” In response to inquiries from WIRED about this apparent contradiction, Meta has repeatedly stressed the conditional nature of Bosworth’s statement—that it “would be” a great feature, not that it is or will be. Spokesperson Ryan Daniels specifically highlighted the word “would,” bolding and underlining it, in an email exchange with WIRED about the apparent disconnect between Stone’s claim that NameTag doesn’t exist and Bosworth’s minutes-long description of it. "There is no contradiction. Boz says this 'would' be a good feature, particularly to answer the blind and low-vision community members’ calls to help them identify people they’ve already met or want to remember,” Daniels tells WIRED in a statement. “While we're exploring this, it's not available to consumers today. We think it’s important that people understand this remains distinct from connecting glasses to a central database of people in the world, which is not a capability we are building." To be clear, NameTag existed as of roughly six weeks ago.
The BriefWire