Facebook weighing facial recognition for smart glasses

smart glasses

Bosworth, who oversees the company’s augmented and virtual reality efforts said face recognition might be the thorniest issue, and we don’t know where to balance those things

Facebook is expected to launch smart glasses this year, but company employees are still discussing whether to add facial recognition technology to the product.

Citing remarks from an internal meeting, BuzzFeed News reported on Thursday that Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, who oversees the company’s augmented and virtual reality efforts, told employees that the company is looking at the legal and privacy issues associated facial recognition.

A Facebook employee reportedly asked the executive about facial recognition and raised concerns about potential harms such as “stalkers.”

Face recognition might be the thorniest issue, where the benefits are so clear, and the risks are so clear, and we don’t know where to balance those things, Bosworth told the employee, according to BuzzFeed.

In a series of tweets, Bosworth confirmed he made remarks about facial recognition during an employee meeting.

I specifically said the future product would be fine without it but there were some nice use cases if it could be done in a way the public and regulators were comfortable with, he said in a tweet. Facial recognition, for example, could be used to identify the name of a person you can’t remember. He also mentioned a neurological condition known as prosopagnosia in which a person has a hard time recognizing familiar faces.

Face recognition is a hugely controversial topic and for good reason and I was speaking about was how we are going to have to have a very public discussion about the pros and cons, Bosworth tweeted.

We’ve been open about our efforts to build AR glasses and are still in the early stages. Face recognition is a hugely controversial topic and for good reason and I was speaking about was how we are going to have to have a very public discussion about the pros and cons, he tweeted.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in September that the company teamed up with EssilorLuxottica, which owns eyewear brands such as Ray-Ban, so the new glasses have different designs and styles.

The Facebook-EssilorLuxottica partnership “will combine Facebook apps and technologies, Luxottica’s category leadership and iconic brands, and Essilor’s advanced lens technology to help people stay better connected to their friends and family,” the companies said in a press release last year.

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