Once again, Meta is toying around with facial recognition. This comes three years after Zuckerberg and company announced the shut-down of the facial recognition project on Meta.
Once again, Meta is toying around with facial recognition. This comes three years after Zuckerberg and company announced the shut-down of the facial recognition project on Meta.
In 2021, the discontinuation of facial recognition on Facebook was due to privacy concerns and regulatory pressure. Now, the company is cautiously reintroducing the technology with the pretext of combatting «celebrity bait» scams, Reuters tells us.
Meta announced that it will run a trial involving around 50,000 public figures. The system will automatically compare these celebrities’ profile pictures with images used in suspected scam advertisements. If a match is found and the ad appears to be indeed a fraud, Meta will block the content.
Monika Bickert, Meta’s VP of content policy, explained that this initiative aims to protect high-profile individuals whose images have been frequently exploited for scam ads.
Celebrities included in this trial will be notified and have the option to opt out. The trial, set to roll out globally starting in December, will exclude regions where Meta doesn’t yet have regulatory clearance, such as the European Union, South Korea, the UK, and certain US states like Texas and Illinois.
Why Texas, of all places, you might ask? Well, in 2024, Meta has agreed to pay $1.4 billion to Texas to settle a lawsuit accusing the company of illegally using facial recognition technology to collect biometric data from millions of Texans without their consent.
