Facebook to shut down face-recognition system, delete data
This Jan. 17, 2017, file photo shows a Facebook logo in Paris. From complaints whistleblower Frances Haugen has filed with the SEC, along with redacted internal documents obtained by The Associated Press, the picture of the mighty Facebook that emerges is of a troubled, internally conflicted company, where data on the harms it causes is abundant, but solutions are halting at best.[AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File]
Facebook said it will shut down its face-recognition system and delete the faceprints of more than 1 billion people.
"This change will represent one of the largest shifts in facial recognition usage in the technology’s history," said a blog post Tuesday from Jerome Pesenti, vice president of artificial intelligence for Facebook’s new parent company, Meta. "More than a third of Facebook’s daily active users have opted in to our Face Recognition setting and are able to be recognized, and its removal will result in the deletion of more than a billion people’s individual facial recognition templates."
He said the company was trying to weigh the positive use cases for the technology "against growing societal concerns, especially as regulators have yet to provide clear rules."
More than a third of Facebook’s daily active users have opted in to have their faces recognized by the social network’s system. That’s about 640 million people. The setting’s removal will mean deleting more than a billion people’s individual facial recognition templates, Pesenti said.
Facebook had already been scaling back its use of facial recognition after introducing it more than a decade ago.
The company in 2019 ended its practice of using face recognition software to identify users’ friends in uploaded photos and automatically suggesting they "tag" them. Facebook was sued in Illinois over the tag suggestion feature.