Facebook doesn’t point to a single incident that prompted the decision, but it comes as facial-recognition systems (and the social network in general) have come under fire.
Meta will shut down Facebook’s facial-recognition system in the coming weeks, and delete the template it uses to recognize people in photos. More than a third of Facebook’s daily active users have opted in to the system, which can suggest people for tagging purposes when you upload a photo. So axing the system “will represent one of the largest shifts in facial recognition usage in the technology’s history,” says Jerome Pesenti, VP of Artificial Intelligence. Pesenti doesn’t point to a single incident that prompted the decision, saying only that there are “growing concerns about the use of this technology as a whole.” But it comes as facial-recognition systems (and Facebook in general) have come under fire. Pesenti argues that lawmakers have dragged their feet on laws governing facial-recognition software. “There are many concerns about the place of facial recognition technology in society, and regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use,” Pesenti says.
