Class-Action Lawsuit Accuses Meta Of Privacy Violations Related To Its Smart Glasses

A proposed class-action lawsuit accuses Meta of creating a database of people's faces pulled from Facebook and Instagram to build a facial recognition feature on its smart glasses.

"For years, Meta has indicated that it was considering building facial-recognition capabilities into its smart glasses," the lawsuit says. "In June 2026, it was discovered that Meta had indeed built such a facial-recognition system and was ready to deploy it for use by Meta Glasses, its latest line of smart glasses."

The lawsuit alleges that the company collected and stored the biometric data of users and non-users, failed to disclose that it was doing so, and violated people's privacy. It focuses on Meta's facial-recognition feature NameTag.

"Once activated, NameTag would 'transform faces captured by Meta's glasses into unique biometric signatures, commonly known as faceprints, and check each one against faceprints stored on the user's phone—a database that's currently configured to receive updates from Meta,'" the lawsuit states.

Essentially, the suit claims that the glasses could match a person encountered in public through images harvested through Meta social platforms. It claims this was done without receiving proper consent from users.

A Meta spokesperson pushed back on the allegations in the lawsuit and said that NameTag had not yet been rolled out.

"This lawsuit is without merit and misrepresents our work. We've been transparent about how we use people's information to build and improve our AI products. As for NameTags, nothing has shipped to consumers and no final decision has been made on what to do here, if anything," a Meta spokesperson told WIRED.

"If we do decide to roll something out, we will take a thoughtful approach and do so with full transparency. One decision we can be clear about—we are not building a universal face database," the company said in a statement.

The lawsuit was brought on behalf of two families - one in Illinois and one in California.

"People shouldn't have to worry if their biometric information will be misused simply because their photographs appear on a social media platform," Plaintiffs attorney Justin Boley, said in a statement to the outlet.