PALO ALTO, Calif.—Even while sitting in a café on University Avenue, one of Silicon Valley’s best-known commercial districts, it’s hard not to get noticed wearing Google Glass.

For more than an hour, I sat for lunch in late May 2013 with Stephen Balaban as he wore Google's new wearable tech. At least three people came by and gawked at the newfangled device, and Balaban even offered to let one woman try it on for herself—she turned out to be the wife of famed computer science professor Tony Ralston.

Balaban is the 23-year-old co-founder of Lambda Labs. It's a project he hopes will eventually become the “largest wearable computing software company in the world.” In Balaban's eyes, Lambda's recent foray into facial recognition only represents the beginning.

Last year, Lambda made an open-source facial recognition API that was compatible with Face.com, whose own API was shut down after being acquired by Facebook. The Bay Area startup then made headlines last month when it announced a facial recognition API for Google Glass. Google countered just last week, proclaiming that it would forbid all official facial recognition apps. Still, the search giant seems to acknowledge that unofficial apps are all but inevitable.

“The API will let you take a set of labeled data [with the algorithm], train an undefined dataset, and predict data on the other end,” Balaban said. “You could use it for faces, logos, or objects like cars. It's a way to give people access to [artificial intelligence] or computer vision that would usually be reserved for a large company or a team of domain experts. Let’s say you're a social network and you don't have a computer vision team. You don't have anyone who has a feature for this. You could do this and do tag suggestions and we'll provide that tech as a service.”

Lambda makes money depending on how many requests a developer needs—need more, pay more. $256 per month, for example, gets 200,000 detects per month. You can start with 100 per month for free. For now, Lambda said that it has “about 1,000 developers on our pay-as-you-drink API,” along with a few unnamed “larger clients.” Balaban declined to say how much money the company was making so far.

Regardless of what happens with Lambda Labs’ facial recognition API in the near-term, it may only be a matter of time before cyborgs (pardon the hyperbole, but the T-101 could certainly recognize faces) will be walking among us.

“I think this is a predictable early step in the trajectory that mass-based, peer-to-peer, real-time face recognition may likely follow over time: initially, apps that use facial recognition merely as a mnemonic tool for people you have already met," Alessandro Acquisti, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and an expert in facial recognition technology, told Ars.

“Then, apps that will work on anyone who opted into some broad service (including strangers). Finally, services and apps that become so popular and accepted that you will have to explicitly opt out to avoid facial recognition (well, assuming that opting out will even be technically possible). Unless, of course, we as a democratic society decide to discuss regulatory frameworks around the usage of facial recognition.”

Recently, members of Congress sent Google a list of questions about Google Glass and its potential impact on privacy. Among those queries was this burning question: "When using Google Glass, is it true that this product would be able to use Facial Recognition Technology to unveil personal information?"

“OK, Glass…”

Balaban said that his interest in wearable technology was inspired by one specific occasion. He found himself at a technology company, talking to a visitor who turned out to be an executive at a well-known financial firm. (He declined to name who it was.)

“I found out later that it was somebody relatively well-known in their field,” he said. “I think that would be a fantastic experience to not only understand who you're talking to but to bring context to a conversation. I would love to live in a world where the things that you have in common with somebody and the shared experiences are available on the fly. I think that makes conversation far more efficient. I think that makes interactions with conversations better. You can relate to them in ways that you couldn't otherwise. I realized that the ideal form factor to solve that would be a heads-up display.”

During our entire conversation, Balaban wore his Google Glass—and, yes, he even let me try it for a few minutes. When I placed the device on my nose, I instinctively wore it like I would my normal eyeglasses. I kept the prism (the screen part) directly in my field of vision.

Balaban showed me how to turn on the device, either by tapping the right side of the frame or by nodding my head up and then down to display the initial “OK, Glass…” prompt. (Otherwise, when the display isn't active, the prism is totally clear.)

Balaban next walked me through various options—I took a picture using the voice commands—but he also pointed out that I should move the nosepiece higher up. With Glass, the prism should be just above eye-level. That way, I could continue looking at the person I’m talking to and consult the screen above with a quick glance.

Glass was noticeably heavier than I expected (all the electronics are on the right side, making the balance of the whole device a bit off-kilter). Generally, I felt uncomfortable wearing it even for a few minutes. It was like there was a barrier between me and the world and an obvious distraction between me and the person I was talking to.

We then tested voice-jacking Glass at a distance (attempting to give voice commands to the device while not wearing it). After all, Glass responds to any voice command and is not keyed to its wearer’s voice. Sitting across a table from Balaban, I tried getting his Glass to take a photo. It didn’t work—but when he stood immediately next to me it did.

Balaban wore the device the entire time we sat together, but he wasn’t using it as far as I could tell. In this regard, it felt like one of those silly Bluetooth earpieces: why wear it all the time if you’re not using it nearly all the time you're wearing it?