Meta quietly removed a hidden face-recognition system from its Meta AI app in June 2026, one day after WIRED reported the undisclosed technology had been embedded in software installed on more than 50 million phones.
The removed system, which Meta internally called NameTag, was designed to convert faces captured by Meta’s smart glasses into unique biometric identifiers known as faceprints, then compare them against a database stored on the user’s device. Faces the system failed to recognize were cropped, indexed, and stored locally for future processing. The feature was never publicly enabled.
A WIRED analysis of the app’s updated code confirmed the removal. The version published the day of WIRED’s original report included several code libraries explicitly named for face recognition. The Friday release contained none of them. Also stripped out were the code running the NameTag recognition process, a “Person recognized” alert, and a folder where cropped images and biometric signatures of unidentified faces would have been stored.
Meta’s vice president of communications, Andy Stone, told WIRED the feature was “purely exploratory” and that “no final decision has been made on what to do here, if anything.” Meta’s chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, called WIRED’s original reporting “incredibly misleading” and “absolutely dishonest.” Stone had previously written that the company could not answer questions about the system because “the feature does not exist.”
NameTag first surfaced publicly in February 2026, when The New York Times reported Meta was developing face recognition for its smart glasses and considering a launch as soon as that year. One internal memo reportedly described releasing it during a “dynamic political environment,” when privacy and civil liberties advocates would be distracted.
Meta declined to answer ten questions WIRED posed before publishing its original report, including whether a database of face profiles had already been created, how long biometric data of unrecognized individuals would be retained, and whether the data would ever be sent to Meta’s servers. The company also did not respond to questions about opt-in or opt-out controls, or to concerns from privacy advocates that the system could enable stalkers and abusers to identify strangers in public. Meta did not answer WIRED’s questions about why the code was removed or whether the changes were planned before the story ran.
Source: WIRED