People with blindness are often excluded from society as they are constantly ignored by the general public. Their lives are out of touch with the world: no lights, no vision, no life. Meta’s Smart glasses, with the addition of facial recognition technology, will be helpful to them for identifying people. Yet, this use of facial recognition software is not accepted by most people in society.

Recently, Facebook decided to bring back the facial recognition system which they had stopped producing for five years because of privacy safety questions. This has drawn attention to another controversial product of Meta’s Smart Glasses, called “Name Tag”. Meta has been considering adding a facial recognition technology to their Smart Glasses, drawing support from AI technology their team have invented. The product would allow wearers to identify and get all information about people through their AI assistant.

However, this product itself carries a “safety and privacy risk” that may cause concerns to the public. Meta has indicated in the internal document that they are planning to first introduce it to the blind population; the glasses will have a huge impact on people who have visual impairment or blindness, helping them to better be included in society.

The second step is to make the product available to the public. Yet, this product still raises questions about liberty and privacy aggression, and the potential of it used by the government to monitor and suppress dissent. Some places have even started to ban facial recognition technology.

Just like the current situation, a series of concerns about privacy safety also happened in 2021 when Meta tried to add a facial recognition system on their first version of smart glasses. In 2024, Meta’s smart glasses were used by two Harvard students to recognize strangers in the Boston Harvard with Ray-Ban Mata’s and an AI assistant called “PimEyes”. They soon released a virally spread video on the social internet.

In response, Meta re-emphasized the importance of the red LED light on the right corner of the frame which indicates the wearer is recording a video. After this incident, Meta continues to underline its purpose of helping people with visual impairments or blindness. That includes working with the “Be My Eye” organization, an accessibility technology company, to develop on the AI facial recognition technology.

The chief executive of “Be My Eyes”, Mike Buckley, suggested that the facial recognition technology will be important and powerful to people with vision problems.