Meta Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over Alleged Biometric Scraping for AI Models

A proposed class-action lawsuit filed in Chicago federal court last week accuses Meta Platforms Inc. of illegally harvesting biometric data from millions of user photos on Facebook and Instagram. According to the complaint, brought by parents and children residing in Illinois and California, Meta extracted facial metrics without notice or consent to train its generative artificial intelligence systems and to develop an unreleased facial recognition feature called NameTag for its smart glasses.

The lawsuit builds on findings first reported by Wired in June, which revealed that code for the NameTag system was hidden inside the companion application for Meta's smart glasses. Although the feature was not enabled for consumers, technical analysis demonstrated that the app had been downloaded over 50 million times and was designed to convert facial images captured by the hardware into biometric signatures. Those signatures were formatted to be compared against local phone databases that received periodic updates from Meta servers.

Plaintiffs allege that Meta constructed these faceprints using uploaded social media content. The filing references claims by internal employees that NameTag could identify individuals via public Instagram accounts or Meta connections, as well as a corporate patent describing face-matching against hosted profile pictures. The legal action also targets Meta’s generative image systems, including Emu and Muse Image. Chief Product Officer Chris Cox previously referred to the company's social media repository as a key "data advantage" for AI training, while Muse Image faced criticism earlier this summer for enabling image creation based on public Instagram profiles before Meta pulled the feature within days.

The named plaintiffs in the action are Illinois residents Francisco Alvarez and his son, alongside California resident Jeremy Wahl and his 10-year-old daughter. Attorneys representing the families estimate the class could extend to millions of nationwide users who uploaded pictures to Facebook or Instagram or submitted photos via AI prompts since September 4, 2021. Under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), the complaint seeks statutory penalties of $5,000 per intentional or reckless violation and $1,000 per negligent violation, alongside additional claims under California law and injunctive relief. "People shouldn’t have to worry if their biometric information will be misused simply because their photographs appear on a social media platform," said Justin Boley, a partner at Wexler Boley & Elgersma representing the plaintiffs.

Meta pushed back against the allegations, maintaining that it has been transparent about its data practices and is not building a centralized facial database. "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 said 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."

Following Wired's June 4 report detailing the hidden software, Meta scrubbed the NameTag code from its mobile application the next day. The company argued the feature never officially existed because it was unavailable to end users, despite independent researchers confirming functional recognition code had shipped within the downloaded application. Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth initially labeled the reporting "incredibly misleading" and "absolutely dishonest." However, Bosworth later discussed NameTag on a podcast weeks later, describing it as an exploratory feature that could allow smart glasses to recognize people a user had previously met, calling it a "great feature."

The complaint frames Meta's recent AI development as part of a longer trajectory of privacy violations, pointing back to a 2004 chat message in which CEO Mark Zuckerberg referred to early users who trusted him with personal data as "dumb fucks." Meta has previously settled major litigation over facial recognition data. In 2020, the company agreed to pay $650 million to settle an Illinois BIPA class action regarding its automatic photo-tagging system, resulting in the deletion of more than one billion faceprints in November 2021. In 2024, Meta agreed to a $1.4 billion settlement with the state of Texas over separate claims of unlawful biometric data collection.