Facial recognition software has moved from police databases into consumer wearables and anonymous social media accounts capable of identifying strangers within seconds, New York Times technology reporter Kashmir Hill said in an interview published Sept. 28 by 404 Media.
Hill, author of the book “Your Face Belongs to Us: A Tale of AI, a Secretive Startup, and the End of Privacy,” told 404 Media journalist Joseph Cox that the technology, once confined largely to law enforcement and a handful of startups, is now built into products such as Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses and used by viral accounts that publish people’s names and personal details after running video clips through face-search engines.
Two Harvard University students, AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio, showed in 2024 that Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses could be paired with the facial-recognition search engine PimEyes to identify strangers in real time, according to 404 Media and Scripps News. Their tool, called I-XRAY, streamed video from the glasses to a phone, matched faces through PimEyes and pulled names, phone numbers, home addresses and partial Social Security numbers from data-broker sites, the outlets reported.
Some dude could just find some girl’s home address on the train and just follow them home.
Nguyen made the remark to Scripps News, describing what the glasses made possible. He and Ardayfio said they built I-XRAY as an awareness campaign and do not intend to release its code or sell it commercially, according to the outlet. Meta’s commercially sold Ray-Ban glasses do not include built-in facial recognition, according to the same reporting.
Separately, an anonymous TikTok account with about 90,000 followers has used facial-recognition software to identify people who appear in other viral videos, then posted their names, social media profiles and sometimes employers, 404 Media reported in 2023. One person identified by the account said being tracked down felt “a bit violated really,” according to that reporting.
Hill’s own reporting first exposed the facial-recognition startup Clearview AI in a Jan. 18, 2020 investigation in The New York Times, which found the company had scraped billions of photographs from the internet and sold face-search access to more than 600 law enforcement agencies. She expanded that reporting into her 2023 book.
PimEyes, the search engine used in the Harvard demonstration, has faced legal challenges over its consumer face-search service. Five Illinois residents sued the company in May 2023, alleging violations of the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act, according to court filings reported by BiometricUpdate; PimEyes has said it does not offer services to Illinois residents.
No federal law regulates commercial or government use of facial recognition in the United States, according to a Congressional Research Service report published in May 2026. Democratic Senators Ed Markey and Jeff Merkley, along with Representatives Pramila Jayapal, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley, reintroduced legislation on Sept. 25 that would bar federal agencies from using facial recognition and other biometric technologies without explicit congressional approval, according to a statement from Markey’s office. The bill had not been scheduled for a committee vote as of Sept. 29.