Meta stops completely with facial recognition on Facebook, a function that was used, among other things, to automatically tag users on photos. As a result, more than a billion facial profiles are also being deleted.
In a blog post Jerome Pesenti (Head of Artificial Intelligence at Meta) explains that the company is phasing out facial recognition because of “society’s growing concerns about such technology.” In addition, it is argued that more unambiguous laws are needed to ensure that they are used in the right direction in the future.
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In the past, Meta (then Facebook) regularly encountered resistance because of the position. Facial recognition has only been available in Europe since 2018, even though the technology made its appearance on the social network in 2010. In the meantime, the Irish Data Protection Commission put a stop to it, partly because at the time no permission from users was asked.
But the rollout in America did not go exactly smoothly either. Over the years, Meta has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits related to the facial recognition feature. People will have thought: enough is enough.
Own choice
Facial recognition on Facebook is opt-in. So it’s off by default until you turn it on yourself. More than a third of all Facebook users had opted for this. For them, the feature will now be disabled, and their ‘facial recognition template’ will be removed. Where they previously received a notification when they were recognized in a photo, this is no longer the case.
The change also has an impact on blind and visually impaired users. Facial recognition was also used for a function called Automatic Alt Text. Facebook reads out what can be seen in a photo and facial recognition made it possible that the names of the people in the photo were also mentioned.
