Meta Faces Lawsuit Over Biometric Data Use in Facial Recognition and AI Systems
Parents and children in the US have filed a class-action lawsuit against Meta, alleging the company illegally used Facebook and Instagram photos to build a facial-recognition system and train AI models. Meta denies the claims, saying it has been transparent about its practices.
A proposed class-action lawsuit was filed last week in federal court in Chicago against Meta, brought by parents and their children from Illinois and California. The plaintiffs allege the company extracted biometric data from their Facebook and Instagram photos without consent, using it both to develop NameTag, an unreleased facial-recognition system for its smart glasses, and to train generative AI models Emu and Muse Image.
Wired reported in June that NameTag's code had been quietly embedded in the companion app for Meta's smart glasses, downloaded more than 50 million times. Although the feature wasn't active for users, analysis showed the system could convert faces captured by the glasses into biometric signatures and compare them against stored "faceprints" in a database updated by Meta. The lawsuit alleges these faceprints likely originated from Facebook and Instagram images, citing reports of employee statements and a related company patent.
A Meta spokesperson called the lawsuit meritless and a misrepresentation of the company's work, stressing that NameTag has never shipped to consumers and no final decision has been made on its release. The company also reiterated it is not building a universal face database.
The suit further targets Meta's image-generation tools. The company has acknowledged training Emu on large volumes of Facebook and Instagram content. Muse Image, launched this summer, drew criticism after it briefly allowed users to generate images based on other people's public Instagram accounts, a feature removed within days.
The proposed class could include millions of people across the US whose photos were uploaded to Facebook or Instagram, or submitted through AI prompts, since September 2021. Plaintiffs are seeking damages under Illinois' biometric privacy law and additional relief under California law. Meta has previously paid large settlements over similar allegations, including $650 million in Illinois in 2020 and $1.4 billion to Texas in 2024.
