Meta stripped the code for an unreleased face-recognition system called NameTag out of its Meta AI smart glasses companion app on Friday, one day after WIRED reported that the machinery had been quietly embedded in software installed on more than 50 million phones. The latest version of the app, analyzed by WIRED, no longer contains the face-recognition libraries, the recognition pipeline, or the local storage folder for cropped images of unidentified faces. Meta has not said why the code was removed or whether NameTag is coming back.
The Thursday report documented that Meta AI shipped with substantial portions of NameTag built in, despite the feature never being publicly enabled. The system was designed to convert faces captured by Meta's smart glasses into biometric signatures, or faceprints, and match them against a database stored on the user's device. Faces the system failed to identify were cropped, indexed, and retained 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 glasses and considering a launch as soon as this year. One memo described releasing the feature during a "dynamic political environment" when privacy and civil liberties advocates would be distracted. WIRED's follow-up established that the underlying code had been present in the Meta AI app as early as January, even as Meta publicly said no final decision had been made.
Key facts
- 01Meta removed NameTag face-recognition libraries from the Meta AI app one day after WIRED's June 8, 2026 report.
- 02The Meta AI companion app is installed on more than 50 million phones.
- 03NameTag code had been embedded in the app since January 2026, months before any public decision on face recognition.
- 04Meta declined to answer 10 questions WIRED submitted before publication, including whether a faceprint database already exists.
- 05The Massachusetts House unanimously passed a consumer privacy bill last week with a private right of action.
Meta vice president of communications Andy Stone initially dismissed the reporting, telling WIRED the company could not answer questions about how the system would work because the feature did not exist. Chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth called the reporting "incredibly misleading" and "absolutely dishonest." The Friday code removal followed within 24 hours of those denials.
“the feature does not exist.”— Andy Stone, Meta vice president of communications
Before publication, Meta declined to answer 10 specific questions from WIRED, including whether a database of face profiles already existed, how long the app would retain photographs and biometric data of unidentified people on a user's device, and whether that data could be transmitted back to Meta's servers. The company also did not say whether NameTag was intended for blind or low-vision users, an accessibility use case that has been floated for similar systems, and did not address concerns from privacy advocates that the feature could enable stalkers to identify strangers in public.
The Friday update removes nearly every functional piece of NameTag from Meta AI. Gone are the face-recognition software libraries, the recognition process code, the "Person recognized" alert the app would have shown when a match occurred, and the folder where unidentified faces would have been stored as cropped images and biometric signatures. A few fragments remain, including an internal debug menu label and a dormant link that would have opened a recognized person's profile, pointing to absent functionality.
Kade Crockford, director of the technology for liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said the removal does not undo the original decision to ship the code in the first place. Crockford pointed to the episode as evidence that consumer privacy needs stronger statutory protection than Congress has delivered. The Massachusetts House of Representatives last week unanimously passed a consumer privacy bill that, if enacted, would include strong enforcement provisions and a private right of action allowing users to sue.
“State lawmakers need to do their job and step up to protect consumer privacy.”— Kade Crockford, Director of the technology for liberty program at the ACLU of Massachusetts
Crockford urged other states to follow with similar private-right-of-action language. The argument is that civil penalties only bite when individuals, not just regulators, can bring claims, and that companies the size of Meta calibrate behavior to expected legal cost rather than to public statements about privacy.
Meta did not immediately respond when asked why the NameTag code was removed, whether the changes were already planned before WIRED's story ran, or whether the company still intends to launch face recognition on its glasses at a later date. Stone, reached again on Monday, said Meta had nothing new to add. The denials from Stone and Bosworth on Thursday have not been retracted or updated to reflect the Friday code change.
The episode is a clean case study in how AI features now ship in dormant form long before product decisions are announced. Embedding NameTag's recognition pipeline and local face-data storage into an app on tens of millions of devices was a deployment decision, regardless of whether the feature was ever turned on. The fact that Meta could disable and largely strip out the system in roughly 24 hours shows the toggle was real — and so was the option to flip it the other way. For AI hardware platforms competing for a face-computing market, the constraint going forward will not be whether the model can identify a stranger on the street. It will be which state legislatures attach a private right of action to the answer.
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