Meta Sued Over Training Data for Its AI and Face-Recognition Systems
Meta is facing a class-action lawsuit alleging that it illegally harvested biometric data from user photos on Facebook and Instagram to train its AI and facial recognition systems. The complaint specifically highlights concerns regarding the company's 'NameTag' feature and its image-generation models.
Why it matters
This case highlights the growing legal and ethical tensions between big tech companies' data-hungry AI development and individual privacy rights.
The proposed class action alleges that Meta violated Illinois and California privacy laws by extracting biometric information from people’s photos without notice or consent.
WIRED reported in June that code for NameTag had been secretly embedded in the Meta glasses AI companion app, which had been downloaded more than 50 million times. While the feature had not been enabled for users of the app, the analysis found that the system was designed to turn faces captured by the glasses into biometric signatures and compare them with so-called faceprints stored in a database on the user’s phone. That database was configured to receive updates from Meta. At the time, WIRED could not determine where the underlying faceprint data came from.
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