Facebook is to delete the “faceprints” of more than 1 billion people after announcing that it is shutting down its facial recognition system due to the “many concerns” about using the technology.
The social media platform has been under political, legal and regulatory pressure over its use of the software, which automatically identifies users in photographs and videos if they have opted in to the feature.
In a statement, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said that it would shut down facial recognition on the platform over the coming weeks and delete 1 billion facial recognition templates.
Photo: Reuters
Meta artificial intelligence vice president Jerome Pesenti said that the technology had helped visually impaired and blind users identify their friends in images, and could help prevent fraud and impersonation.
However, Pesenti said the advantages needed to be weighed against “growing concerns about the use of this technology as a whole.”
“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,” he said. “Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate.”
If users have opted into the face recognition setting, the faceprint used to identify them is to be deleted.
If the face recognition setting is turned off, Meta said that there is no faceprint to delete.
Last year, Meta paid US$650 million to settle a US class-action lawsuit brought by users who claimed the firm had created and stored scans of their faces without permission.
Complaints had also been filed with the US competition regulator and in 2012, a Facebook application to introduce facial recognition in the EU had to be withdrawn because no provision had been made to gain European users’ consent.
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