Facebook is looking to add face recognition to its smartly anticipated smart glasses that are scheduled to hit the market next year.
Andrew Bosworth, director of Facebook Reality Labs, said during a staff meeting that the company is investigating the legal and privacy implications of the technology, BuzzFeed reports.
He warns that the benefits and risks are obvious, “and we do not know where to balance things.”
Face recognition will help the user to recognize someone whose name he has forgotten, theorized Bosworth, or if he is blind to the face.
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Andrew Bosworth, director of Facebook Reality Labs, said the company is investigating the legal and privacy implications of adding face recognition technology to its upcoming smart glasses.
At the company’s general meeting, an unnamed employee asked Bosworth about concerns about privacy raised by face recognition, including snoopers.
‘[That] can be the most difficult case, ‘Bosworth replied. “Where the benefits are so clear, and the risks are so clear, and we do not know where to balance things.”
Privacy was a very serious issue for Facebook, which raised $ 650 million to settle a case, claiming it violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act by using members’ data to tag people in photos.
“Face recognition is a very controversial topic and for good reason,” Bosworth tweeted. “… I talked about how we’ll have to have a very public discussion about the pros and cons.”
The Ray-Bans smart glasses from Facebook are expected later this year. Bosworth said the company should have a very public discussion on the pros and cons of adding face recognition tools
While Facebook’s smart glasses would be ‘good’ without the ability to identify faces, he added some ‘nice use cases’ such as forgetting someone’s name during a meal.
He also referred to people with prosopagnosia, or facial blindness, a neurological condition that makes it difficult to recognize familiar faces.
Facebook chief diversity officer Maxine Williams added that the company may need to develop its own privacy guidelines in areas where the technology is not regulated by law, BuzzFeed reports.
Mark Zuckerberg revealed in September that Facebook is collaborating with Luxottica Group on some smart Ray-Bans.
In addition, the social media giant was deliberately vague about its plans, even when the portable material will be available.
In a blog post in January, Bosworth teased that the devices would ‘arrive sooner rather than later’.
He told Bloomberg that smart glasses can enhance a person’s life in a way that a smartphone cannot do, such as capturing a moment with your children.
Mark Zuckerberg revealed in September that Facebook is collaborating with Luxottica Group on some smart Ray-Bans. In addition, the company was deliberately vague about what it was going to offer
By the time you get on the phone, not only have you missed it, but if you do not miss it, you are probably watching the actual event, but through your phone, ” he said. “If you have the right technology, it can get in the way.”
This indicates that the glasses will contain a camera or some other way to capture and save moments.
It may not contain augmented reality (AR) technology, which places digital objects on real environments.
‘It’s definitely a pair of glasses, and it definitely offers a lot of functionality, [but] we are very smart about the features we offer exactly, ‘Bosworth said.
‘We’re excited about it, but we do not want to hype it. We do not even call it augmented reality, we just call it ‘smart glasses’.
Another product from Facebook Reality Labs, the Oculus Quest 2, has just added a new feature: users can interact with the headset by saying the phrase ‘Hey Facebook’.
‘It’s going to be a gradual implementation,’ the company said in a blog post, ‘but you can find and activate the password via our experimental feature settings – and then say’ Hey Facebook, take a screenshot ‘,’ Hey Facebook, I show what’s online, ” Hey Facebook, open Supernatural ‘or any of our other voice commands to get started.’
The wake-up function is opt-in, and will not work if the microphone is turned off or when the headset is asleep or turned off.
It started rolling on Quest 2 headsets on Thursday and will be added to the original Quest in due course.