Meta To Pull Facial Recognition Tech From Facebook

Meta will shut down Facebook’s Face Recognition system next week. Face Recognition settings will no longer be automatically recognized in photos and videos as part of these changes. In addition, Meta will delete the template used to identify people using facial recognition.

Face Recognition has been enabled for more than a third of Facebook’s daily active users, so removing it will delete more than a billion people’s individual templates. Face recognition can be highly valuable in a number of places where people use platforms, so making this change required careful consideration.

The technology was implemented is to help people with blindness and other visual impairments when they or their friends are in images, as part of our award-winning automatic alt text system. Facebook has also offered people the option of being automatically notified if they appear in a photo or video posted by someone else, as well as providing recommendations for who to tag in a photo for many years.

Facial recognition technology may be useful to verify a person’s identity, or to prevent fraud and impersonation. As a result, Meta believes facial recognition can help for products like these as long as privacy, transparency and control are in place, so you decide if and how you want your face to be used.

However, there are concerns in society regarding facial recognition technology, and regulators are still in the process of developing clear guidelines. As a result of the ongoing uncertainty, Meta believes that limiting the use of facial recognition to a limited range of scenarios is appropriate.

People can gain access to a locked account, verify their identity in financial products, or unlock a locked device through these services. Meta works closely with users to ensure full transparency and control over facial recognition.

During this process, a number of things will change, including

* Meta will no longer automatically recognize people’s faces in Memories, photos, or videos.

* People won’t be able to turn on face recognition for suggested tagging, or see suggested tags with their name in photos and videos. Therefore, users will have to manually tag posts.

* Automatic Alt Text (AAT), a technology used to describe images for people who are blind or visually impaired, will also be affected by this change. Around 4% of photographs are currently
identifiable. Through the change, AAT will still be able to identify how many people are in a photo, but it will no longer use facial recognition to identify who each person is. Other than
that, AAT will continue to operate normally, and we will work closely with the blind and visually impaired community to improve AAT. Visit the Facebook Accessibility page to learn more about
what these changes mean for people who use AAT.

* Meta will remove the template used to identify you if you have chosen the Face Recognition setting. In case you have turned off face recognition, there is no template to delete and therefore
no change will be made.