Facebook to shut facial recognition system and
delete 1bn ‘faceprints’
Firm says decision is in response to growing concerns
over software that identifies users in photos and videos
Facebook’s parent company, Meta, said it would shut
down its facial recognition on the platform over the coming weeks.
Dan Milmo
Global technology editor
Tue 2 Nov
2021 19.58 GMT
Facebook
will delete the “faceprints” of more than a 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 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 a statement, Facebook’s parent
company, Meta, said it would shut down facial recognition on the platform over
the coming weeks and delete 1 billion facial recognition templates.
Meta’s
vice-president of artificial intelligence, Jerome Pesenti, said the technology
had helped visually impaired and blind users identify their friends in images
and can help prevent fraud and impersonation. But 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 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.
In 2020,
Facebook’s parent company paid $650m (£477m) 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recognition in the EU had to be withdrawn because no provision had been made to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 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 in recognition of 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.”
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