Overview
- A software license obtained by WIRED shows Meta took a license from Rank One Computing to test face recognition in the Meta AI companion app for Ray‑Ban and Oakley smart glasses.
- Code remnants tied to Rank One appeared in a shipped build of the Meta AI app but the face‑recognition systems were dormant for users and most related libraries were deleted from the app on June 5.
- The Rank One license explicitly covers liveness detection, which checks that a camera is seeing a real person rather than a photo or mask, and permits handling up to 10 million facial templates.
- Rank One earns roughly 80 percent of its revenue from government clients and its technology is used by agencies such as the U.S. Marshals Service, NCIS, and work for U.S. Special Operations Command.
- Independent NIST testing found versions of Rank One's algorithm produced uneven false‑match rates by sex and country of birth, and privacy groups warn the episode highlights weak U.S. rules for biometric ID in consumer devices.