Facebook to end some uses of facial recognition after criticism, lawsuit

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Facebook said on Tuesday it would shut down its facial recognition system and remove more than a billion face models after years of growing criticism of the company’s practices.

The announcement comes months after a federal judge approved a settlement of a class action lawsuit in Illinois in which Facebook agreed to pay $ 650 million for allegedly using face tagging and other biometric data without users’ permission.

For years, privacy advocates and lawyers have questioned Facebook’s practice of scanning photos for any recognizable faces and accused the company of distorting the system with people using the platform. social media.

Facebook said in its statement from Jerome Pesenti, the company’s vice president for artificial intelligence, that it would continue to use facial recognition technology for a “narrow set of use cases.” This would include helping people access a locked account, verify their identity in financial products or unlock a personal device, he said.

But for other situations such as photos on social media, the company said it had reassessed whether the system was worth it and the costs.

“We need to weigh the positive use cases of facial recognition against growing societal concerns, especially since regulators have yet to set clear rules,” Pesenti said.

“As part of this change, people who have opted for our facial recognition setting will no longer be automatically recognized in photos and videos, and we will remove the facial recognition model used to identify them,” he said. declared.

He said more than a third of daily active Facebook users have opted for the facial recognition setting and could be recognized. And he said some people highly value the system, including a feature that generates image descriptions for people who are blind and visually impaired.

But he said there was too much uncertainty around regulatory and privacy issues.

“Amid this continuing uncertainty, we believe it is appropriate to limit the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases,” he said.

David Ingram covers technology for NBC News.

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