What happened in this Tech story?

Parents in Illinois and California are suing Meta in federal court, alleging the company illegally harvested biometric data from their Facebook and Instagram photos to build a secret face-recognition system and to train its AI image-generation models.

What is a key fact in this story? (1)

**Plaintiffs** filed a proposed class action in Chicago federal court alleging Meta extracted biometric information from Facebook and Instagram photos without notice or consent to build NameTag, an unreleased face-recognition system embedded in the Meta glasses AI companion app, and to train generative AI models including Emu and Muse Image.

What is a key fact in this story? (2)

**WIRED's June 4 report** found NameTag code had been secretly embedded in an app downloaded over 50 million times; Meta removed the code the following day, and CTO Andrew Bosworth called the reporting "incredibly misleading" and "absolutely dishonest."

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Meta Sued Over Face-Recognition, AI Training Data — SkimNews

By Wired · Summarized & edited by Kapil Samant · 2026-09-11

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Plaintiffs filed a proposed class action in Chicago federal court alleging Meta extracted biometric information from Facebook and Instagram photos without notice or consent to build NameTag, an unreleased face-recognition system embedded in the Meta glasses AI companion app, and to train generative AI models including Emu and Muse Image.
WIRED's June 4 report found NameTag code had been secretly embedded in an app downloaded over 50 million times; Meta removed the code the following day, and CTO Andrew Bosworth called the reporting "incredibly misleading" and "absolutely dishonest."
Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act underpins the suit, with plaintiffs seeking $5,000 per intentional or reckless violation and $1,000 per negligent violation; the proposed national class could number in the millions, with claims dating back to September 4, 2021.
Meta's prior biometric track record includes a $650 million Illinois class-action settlement in 2020 over an earlier face-recognition system and a $1.4 billion Texas settlement in 2024 over similar allegations.
Chief product officer Chris Cox previously called Facebook and Instagram a "data advantage" for Meta's AI systems; Muse Image drew earlier criticism this summer for letting users generate images based on other people's public Instagram accounts, a feature Meta removed within days.
The complaint cites a 2004 chat in which CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly referred to people who trusted him with their data as "dumb fucks," framing the case as part of a longer pattern of privacy violations at the company.

Why it matters: A national class in the millions suing under BIPA, where statutory damages start at $1,000 per negligent violation, exposes Meta to a damages multiplier that could dwarf its prior $650 million Illinois and $1.4 billion Texas biometric settlements, while the suit simultaneously targets the data pipeline feeding its Emu and Muse Image models — raising fresh legal risk for AI products Meta is actively shipping.