Facebook Shutting Down Facial Recognition, To Delete Data Of Over 1 Billion Users

Citing privacy concerns, Facebook announced it will shut it decade-old automatic facial recognition feature for photos and videos and will also delete the face scan data of over one billion users.

Facebook Shutting Down Facial Recognition

New Delhi: Citing concerns, social networking giant Facebook has announced it will pull the plug on its automatic facial recognition feature for photos and videos after a decade. The Mark Zuckerberg owned company will also delete the face scan data of over one billion users. This feature, notably, has raised a lot of privacy concerns in the past.

"We’re shutting down the Face Recognition system on Facebook. People who’ve opted in will no longer be automatically recognized in photos and videos and we will delete more than a billion people’s individual facial recognition templates," Jerome Pesenti, VP of Artificial Intelligence, Facebook, wrote in a blog post late on Tuesday.

According to the company, this change will represent one of the largest shifts in facial recognition usage in the technology’s history. More than a third of Facebook’s daily active users have opted into 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. 

"Looking ahead, we still see facial recognition technology as a powerful tool, for example, for people needing to verify their identity or to prevent fraud and impersonation. We believe facial recognition can help for products like these with privacy, transparency and control in place, so you decide if and how your face is used. We will continue working on these technologies and engaging outside experts," Pesenti added.

Why Facebook is doing away with the facial recognition feature?

Facebook says making this change required careful consideration because the company has seen a number of places where face recognition can be highly valued by people using platforms. For example, our award-winning automatic alt text system, which uses advanced AI to generate descriptions of images for people who are blind and visually impaired, uses the Face Recognition system to tell them when they or one of their friends is in an image, the company wrote in the blog post.