The Short Version
Researchers rebuilt Meta's facial recognition pipeline as of January 2026, while regulators, a lawsuit, and rivals including Google and Samsung close in on its 72.2% smart glasses lead.
Researchers independently rebuilt the face-recognition pipeline inside Meta's Ray-Ban glasses and found it nearly functional as of January 2026, which means the feature was not a distant roadmap item but something close to ready. Buyers paid up to $799 for glasses sold as privacy-controlled, yet the lawsuit says they could not opt out of having their footage reviewed by humans overseas without losing all AI features entirely. You bought privacy. You got a checkbox.
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