Meta will shut down Facebook’s facial-recognition system in the coming weeks, and delete the template it uses to recognize people in photos.
More than a third of Facebook’s daily active users have opted in to the system, which can suggest people for tagging purposes when you upload a photo. So axing the system “will represent one of the largest shifts in facial recognition usage in the technology’s history,” says Jerome Pesenti, VP of Artificial Intelligence.
Pesenti doesn’t point to a single incident that prompted the decision, saying only that there are “growing concerns about the use of this technology as a whole.” But it comes as facial-recognition systems (and Facebook in general) have come under fire.
Pesenti argues that lawmakers have dragged their feet on laws governing facial-recognition software. “There are many concerns about the place of facial recognition technology in society, and regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use,” Pesenti says. “Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate.”
(CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also shifted blame to Congress for failing to adequately address some of the bigger problems on the social network, from misinformation to liability for content.)
On the downside, the move means Facebook won’t be able to identify people in photos using Automatic Alt Text (AAT), which describes photos to people who are blind or visually impaired. But AAT “depends on an underlying technology that attempts to evaluate the faces in a photo to match them with those kept in a database of people who opted-in. The changes we’re announcing today involve a company-wide move away from this kind of broad identification, and toward narrower forms of personal authentication,” Pesenti says.
Facebook will explore more secure uses of facial-recognition technology, like on-device face verification, Pesenti says. But for now, the system will shut down in the next few weeks.
What does that mean for you? Facebook won’t automatically recognize if people’s faces appear in Memories, photos, or videos. And you won’t get tagging suggestions when you upload pics. “If you have opted into our Face Recognition setting, we will delete the template used to identify you. If you have the face recognition setting turned off, there is no template to delete and there will be no change,” Pesenti says.
Facial-recognition for photo tagging on Facebook dates back to 2010. But it has since grown ever-more sophisticated, with major companies like Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft developing advanced systems for corporate clients. One problem: it’s often wrong, particularly when it comes to identifying people of color.
Amid pushback from privacy groups and the public, all three companies have scaled back their facial-recognition efforts. Microsoft says it won’t offer the tech to law enforcement unless Congress acts, Amazon has paused its rollout to law enforcement indefinitely, and IBM has scrapped its efforts for now.
