More than 70 civil rights organizations have sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding the company abandon plans to add facial recognition to its smart glasses. The coalition, including groups like the ACLU and Electronic Privacy Information Center, warns the technology would empower stalkers and predators by allowing users to identify people without their consent.

This feature, internally called Name Tag, would use AI to pull up information about people in a smart glasses user's field of view. The groups argue no safeguards or opt-out mechanisms could make such technology safe, as bystanders would have no way to know or consent to being identified. The letter states people should move through daily life without fear of being silently verified by strangers.

Meta has reportedly been working on two versions of the toolset - one identifying only Meta-connected users and another identifying anyone with a public social media account. The company has a history of abandoning facial recognition after public outcry, having shut down Facebook's photo-tagging system in 2021 and paying out billions in biometric privacy lawsuits to settle cases in Illinois and Texas.