Parents in Illinois and California are taking Meta to court over how it collects facial recognition data from Meta Glasses, colloquially known in some circles as “pervert glasses.” Per Wired, a new lawsuit filed by Illinois resident Francisco Alvarez and his son and California resident Jeremy Wahl and his daughter accuses Meta of illegally collecting the Facebook and Instagram photos of children for its harassment-forward tech specs’ facial recognition software. Those photos, according to a new proposed class action filed by the parents, were also used to train generative AI models, such as Emu and Muse. This latest suit adds to a growing collection of parents suing Meta over how it handles younger members.
At the center of this latest suit is a system called NameTag, which Wired reports has been “secretly embedded” in the glasses’ AI software. The feature wasn’t enabled in the Glasses’ app, but once activated by Meta, the software “transform[s] 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 suit theorizes the Glasses could use the app to recognize and identify faces. The app has been downloaded more than 50 million times but did not seek user consent to download NameTag. Meta has not disclosed what it’s doing with the facial data. However, that’s not all the parents are upset with Meta about. The suit alleges that Facebook and Instagram harvested the biometric data of people in photographs for its Emu generative AI model.
Stealing people’s faces for profit is ingrained in Facebook’s DNA, the suit claims, recalling Zuckerberg’s Facemash origins. “These latest privacy violations by Meta are not an aberration, but the foreseeable consequence of a business model that has for over 20 years depended on collecting, analyzing, and monetizing ever-greater amounts of personal data,” the suit states. “Zuckerberg had obtained the images by scraping students’ ID photos from Harvard’s online directories without permission. The students had not consented to having their photos copied and repurposed for Zuckerberg’s version of Hot or Not.”
In a statement to Wired, Meta said the lawsuit is “without merit and misrepresents” its work, claiming the company has “been transparent about how [it] uses people’s information to build and improve its AI products.”
The plaintiffs seek $5,000 for each reckless or intentional violation and $1,000 for each negligent violation. This is hardly the first time Meta has been caught using biometric data without user consent. Wired notes that, in 2020, it settled an Illinois class action for $650 million and settled a $1.4 billion Texas biometric data suit. Throughout the last few months, parents have been suing Meta over its addictive qualities. Last month, the company settled a $17 billion lawsuit with 29 states for knowingly addicting and harming children with its websites.
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