Facebook, the social media
giant which recently rebranded itself Meta, has decided to stop using facial
recognition technology which is used for tagging pictures to people on its
platform. The option will stop being available in coming weeks. The technology Facebook
uses to template pictures is extremely popular among users with over a third of
its base, or about one billion people, using the feature.

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Explaining the company’s
position, Jerome Pesenti, vice-president of Meta’s artificial intelligence,
said, “This change will represent one of the largest shifts in facial recognition
usage in the technology’s history. Its removal will result in deletion of more
that a billion people’s individual facial recognition templates.”

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What was
Facebook’s facial recognition technology?

Facebook’s facial recognition
technology allowed the platform to scan the “faceprint” of a user. This, in
turn, would provide users to have the option of tagging people in pictures and
videos. The same feature would be used to seek out anyone impersonating another
on the platform.

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Why is Facebook
stopping the use of the tech?

Privacy and transparency
regulations were on Facebook’s mind when the company decided to stop using the
technology. Facebook is already facing a barrage of accusations for not doing
enough to stop violence and subverting democratic processes. At such a time,
the company seemed to have decided to take a relatively progressive take on
privacy and technology.

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According to Jerome Pesenti,
facial recognition technology is a powerful identity verification tool and
there need to be strong controls in place to allow people to limit how their
faces are used. There are many concerns about the place of facial recognition
in society and regulators are still playing catch up, he said.

What will happen
to tagged pictures?

Facebook says existing tagged
photos will remain as they are and there will be no changes, only that the tag
suggestion will not be available in future. Facebook will also allow people
with visual impairments to tag their own photos and videos but won’t
automatically suggest them.

The company said it will
continue to explore more avenues of using facial technology with privacy,
control and transparency remaining priorities. Meta believes there are a number
of “potentially positive use cases” for facial recognition in the future, a
Meta spokesperson told the Guardian.