Facebook stop using the facial recognition system on your platform and it will eliminate more than one billion profiles accumulated in the social network. It is the first big announcement after the creation of the new parent company Meta.
Facial recognition technologies have advanced dramatically in the last decade and are easy to obtain, deploy, and use today. Increasingly present in the technological market (Apple’s Face ID, Windows Hello or this automatic Facebook tagging) as other advanced technologies (Artificial Intelligence as an example) their use has advantages, disadvantages and great risks if it is not used correctly and responsibly. .
So what consumer uses are just the tip of the iceberg As we saw in the Project Maven, a military artificial intelligence and machine learning program promoted by the United States Department of Defense, which has caused conflicts between Google, Microsoft and Amazon, and even a ‘rebellion’ in its employees who know well its problems, from opaque decision-making and discrimination to the intrusion of privacy, passing through the problems of protection of personal data, human dignity and freedom of expression and information.
Very, very dangerous in pernicious uses, the European Parliament voted in favor of prohibiting police forces from using facial recognition systems and automated analysis of other human traits such as fingerprints, DNA, voice and other signs of behavior and biometrics.
Facebook facial recognition
Facebook’s facial recognition system automatically identifies users in photos and videos to create a unique identifier or template. After, This template is used to identify users in uploaded photos or automatically tag people in the Memories section.
Its use has been controversial, and as in other sections regarding the privacy of its users, its application by Facebook has not been ideal (because it is soft). The company recently paid $ 650 million to settle a lawsuit in Illinois alleging that collected and stored the biometric data of users without consent. A tacit recognition of that pernicious use of which we speak.
Now, under the Meta umbrella, Facebook will lock this technology: “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.”Jerome Pesenti, VP of AI at Facebook, has described: “Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate”.
In this way, Facebook will stop using it on the social network and will remove facial recognition templates from more than 1 billion people, more than a third of the daily active users of Facebook who had chosen to use it, according to the company. The phase-out will take place around the world and is expected to be completed in December.
Other changes underway affect the automatic alt text tool, which creates image descriptions for the visually impaired and will no longer include the names of recognized people in photos after facial recognition is removed.
Ending the use of Facebook’s facial recognition system is part of the new strategy with Meta to achieve «a move away from the entire company of this type of mass identifications«, describe. Zuckerberg’s firm has a long way to go to regain community trust after years of abusive practices and accumulation of immense power following the authorization to purchase Instagram, WhatsApp or Oculus. In any case, everything that comes from self-regulation is positive.
