A set of parents and their children in Illinois and California filed a lawsuit last week in federal court in Chicago alleging that Meta illegally used their Facebook and Instagram photos to build NameTag, an unreleased face-recognition system for its smart glasses, and to train generative AI models including Emu and Muse Image.
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.
The complaint alleges that those faceprints are possibly derived from Facebook and Instagram images, citing reporting that Meta employees claimed that NameTag could recognize people through their Meta connections or public Instagram accounts, along with a company patent describing face matching against profile photos and other images held by Meta.
Meta told WIRED in June that it was “not building a central face database,” but it would not answer questions about whether NameTag would be opt-in or how the system would retain faceprints. The complaint acknowledges that Meta has not disclosed which images, if any, were used for generating biometric data, saying that information remains solely in the company’s possession.
The suit also targets Meta’s image-generation systems. Meta has said it trained Emu on large quantities of Facebook and Instagram images and text, with chief product officer Chris Cox calling those platforms a “data advantage” for its AI systems. The complaint alleges that the training process illegally harvested biometric information about people who appeared in the images. Muse Image, released this summer, had earlier drawn criticism after allowing users to generate images based on other people’s public Instagram accounts, a feature the company removed within days after saying it had “missed the mark.”
“This lawsuit is without merit and misrepresents our work. We’ve been transparent about how we use people’s information to build and improve our AI products. As for NameTags, nothing has shipped to consumers and no final decision has been made on what to do here, if anything,” a Meta spokesperson says in a statement. “If we do decide to roll something out, we will take a thoughtful approach and do so with full transparency. One decision we can be clear about—we are not building a universal face database.”
“People shouldn’t have to worry if their biometric information will be misused simply because their photographs appear on a social media platform,” Justin Boley, a partner at Wexler Boley & Elgersma and an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in a statement.
The plaintiffs are Francisco Alvarez and his son, both Illinois residents, and Jeremy Wahl, a California resident, and his 10-year-old daughter. But the proposed class includes people in Illinois, California, and across the United States whose images were uploaded to Facebook or Instagram or were submitted to Meta’s generative AI systems through prompts, dating back to September 4, 2021. The complaint estimates that the national class could number in the millions.
Under Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act, the plaintiffs are seeking $5,000 for each intentional or reckless violation, or actual damages if greater, and $1,000 for each negligent violation, or actual damages if greater, as well as injunctive relief. The California claims seek additional damages and other relief.
