(Wikimedia Commos)
Facebook will stop automatically recognizing faces in photos and videos, according to a press release from Meta, which now owns the social network.
The platform will also delete the biometric user profiles that were used for this function.
Facebook began implementing facial recognition in 2010, simplifying the feature that allowed you to tag friends in photos.
At that time, it was one of the largest examples of the use of such a system in the world.
Over the years, facial recognition technologies have become ubiquitous, leading to debate in society and among researchers about whether the convenience of these technologies outweighs the risks associated with privacy, quality of work and unfair use.
In addition, technological progress in this area has occurred too quickly, and legislative regulation did not have time to adapt to it.
As a result, in the past two or three years, along with the development of technology, the reverse process is taking place
Cities and regions are introducing a moratorium on facial recognition, and recently the EU has joined them, asking the participating countries to pass relevant laws.
These proposals concern government agencies, but due to the general background and lawsuits, companies are also reconsidering their attitude towards mass face recognition.
Facebook made facial recognition in photos turned off by default in 2019, and has now announced that it will be dropping it altogether.
Meta announced that it will turn off the feature on Facebook in the coming weeks, as well as remove biometric profiles - data that allowed a person in a photo to be associated with a specific user.
The company notes that it will remove more than a billion profiles in total (the function was active in more than a third of the audience on the social network).
Having turned away from mass and indiscriminate recognition, the company will not abandon face recognition algorithms.
For example, they will be used for identity verification and other similar cases.
Avoiding facial recognition in all photos and videos has two negative consequences.
First, with its help, blind users could find out who is depicted in the pictures, because the algorithms annotated them with text.
Secondly, users will not receive notifications when someone else uploads pictures with them, including without their consent.
In addition, do not forget that in addition to Facebook itself, other companies can index photos for their own needs, as shown by the Clearview AI scandal.
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