Facebook ends facial recognition system
Print Edition
FACEBOOK Inc announced on Tuesday it is shutting down its facial recognition system, which automatically identifies users in photos and videos, citing growing societal concerns about the use of such technology.
“Regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use,” Jerome Pesenti, vice president of artificial intelligence at Facebook, wrote in a blog post. “Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate.”
The removal of face recognition by the world’s largest social media platform comes as the tech industry has faced a reckoning over the past few years over the ethics of using the technology.
Critics say facial recognition technology, which is popular among retailers, hospitals and other businesses for security purposes could compromise privacy, target marginalized groups and normalize intrusive surveillance. IBM stopped facial recognition product sales, and Microsoft and Amazon have suspended sales to police indefinitely.
Facebook has been under intense scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers over user safety and a wide range of abuses on its platforms. The company, which last week renamed itself Meta Platforms Inc, said more than one-third of Facebook’s daily active users have opted into the face recognition setting, and the change will now delete the “facial recognition templates” of more than 1 billion people.
The removal will roll out globally and is expected to be complete by December, a Facebook spokesperson said.
Privacy advocacy and digital rights groups welcomed the move. Alan Butler, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said, “For far too long Internet users have suffered personal data abuses at the whims of Facebook and other platforms. EPIC first called for an end to this program in 2011,” though he said comprehensive data protection regulations were still needed in the United States.
Adam Schwartz, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Facebook’s action could mark a “notable moment in the national turning-away from face recognition.”
Facebook added that its automatic alt-text tool, which creates image descriptions for visually impaired people, will no longer include the names of people recognized in photos after the removal of face recognition, but will otherwise function normally.
Facebook did not rule out using facial recognition technology in other products, saying it still sees it as a “powerful tool” for identity verification for example.
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