Meta has filed a patent for AI smartglasses that use facial recognition to automatically identify people in the frame and generate highlight reels of their actions.
The document, published Thursday, outlines a system that records video clips whenever a recognised person performs a specific action. One illustration describes the device capturing moments from a dinner party and serving those clips directly to the user.
Patentlyze, an organisation that tracks patent filings, alerted 444 Media to the application on Friday.
The patent provides granular detail on Meta’s controversial push to combine facial recognition with its AI glasses. The system is described as potentially using “user relationship data” to personalise the content it generates.
In the text, a prompt from the system asks: “I’ve generated some highlights of tonight’s dinner party. Would you like to see them?” alongside thumbnails of people laughing.
The illustrations depict a person wearing the glasses, looking at a group, then the device focusing on specific individuals within that group.
How it works
The patent describes a dense technical process. The system, which may include one or more cameras, receives input from the user. It then uses machine-learning and “sensory data” to determine points of interest within the camera’s field of view.
These points include:
- Detecting people in the shot using facial recognition algorithms
- Identifying those specific individuals
- Monitoring their facial expressions
- Using eye gaze data captured by the client system
- Figuring out other points of interest based on scene and semantic understanding
Once the people and actions are identified, the system creates various “highlight files.”
Although the patent is written for “particular camera-based tasks by particular systems in a particular manner,” Meta notes it “contemplates assisting users in any suitable camera-based task by any suitable system in any suitable manner.” This suggests the technology could be used for other purposes beyond the glasses in the future.
It is not clear if these ideas will appear in a final product or an update for the glasses.
Meta continues to push its AI smart glasses despite widespread criticism. In June, WIRED reported that Meta silently added facial recognition code for the glasses to millions of phones. The company removed the code shortly after the discovery.
Meta did not respond to a request for comment.
What it means
This filing confirms Meta is actively planning tools that automatically curate social moments for the wearer. The device would act as an automated editor, deciding which interactions are worth saving based on who is present and what they are doing. For the user, this removes the need to manually select moments to save, but it also means the device decides what is important without explicit consent from the people in the frame.
