The firm said the move is in response to growing concerns over its technology that recognises people in photos and videos.
In a statement on November 2, Tuesday, the social media giant said that it will stop its ‘facial recognition’ system amid growing concerns from users and regulators. Meta, formerly known as Facebook, will delete ‘faceprints’ of more than one billion users in the coming weeks.
Jerome Pesenti, Vice President of Artificial Intelligence, said in the blog, “As part of this change, people who have opted in to our Face Recognition setting will no longer be automatically recognised in photos and videos.”
“More than a third of Facebook’s daily active users have opted in to our Face Recognition setting and are able to be recognised, and its removal will result in the deletion of more than a billion people’s individual facial recognition templates,” the statement said.
If users have opted into the face recognition setting, the faceprint used to identify them will be deleted. If that face recognition setting is turned off, Meta said there is no faceprint to delete. Pesenti said Facebook will encourage users to tag posts manually.
This decision to shut the facial recognition feature will also impact the blind and visually impaired users. Automatic Alt Text (AAT) uses the Face Recognition system to tell them when they or one of their friends is in an image. AAT currently identifies people in about four percent of photos.
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.”
The social media network has been under political, legal and regulatory pressure over its use of the software, which automatically identifies users in photos and videos – and let’s them know if a fellow user has posted a photo or video with them in it – if they have opted in to the feature.
In 2020, Facebook’s parent company paid $650m (£477m) to settle a 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 United States competition regulator.
In 2012, a Facebook application to introduce facial recognition in the European Union had to be withdrawn because no provision had been made to gain user consent.
Pesenti added that the decision reflected a “company-wide” move away from facial recognition technology. Meta also owns the Instagram photo-sharing app and the WhatsApp messaging service, with 2.8 billion people using the company’s platforms, including 1.9 billion for Facebook.
Last week the parent company rebranded itself from Facebook to Meta to recognise a new focus on the metaverse, a concept where the physical and digital worlds combine to allow people to lead their professional and social lives virtually, via digital representation of themselves – or avatars.
The rebranding and the facial recognition moves come as Meta has been rocked by a series of revelations from whistleblower Frances Haugen.
The former employee has released tens of thousands of internal documents, and given testimonies to politicians in Westminster and Washington, which exposed Meta’s failure to keep some users safe and contain the spread of misinformation.
In the wake of the Haugen revelations Meta has rowed back on one potential product launch by announcing that it has paused work on developing a version of Instagram for 10- to 12-year-olds.
It has also stressed that it will develop its metaverse plans in close cooperation with regulators and legal experts.
Pesenti said that if the company intended to use facial recognition technology in the future it would “continue to be public about intended use” and “how people can have control over these systems and their personal data.”
