Facebook closing face recognition system quoting societal concerns
Meta is closing the face recognition system on Facebook People deleting more than a billion people’s individual facial recognition templates referring to societal concerns.
“We need to weigh the positive use cases for facial recognition against growing societal concerns, especially as regulators have yet to provide clear rules”, the company said in a blog post. “This change will represent one of the largest shifts in facial recognition usage in the technology’s history”.
“In the coming weeks, we will shut down the Face Recognition system on Facebook as part of a company-wide move to limit the use of facial recognition in our products. As part of this change, people who have opted in to our Face Recognition setting will no longer be automatically recognized in photos and videos, and we will delete the facial recognition template used to identify them.”
The change means closing Automatic Alt Text (AAT), a technology used to create image descriptions for people who are blind or visually impaired. The company said it will work closely with the blind and visually impaired community on technologies to continually improve AAT.
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