Facebook to Remove its Facial Recognition Feature, What Does it Mean for Users?

Facebook has announced that the company is shutting down its facial recognition system.

Facebook's parent company Meta on Tuesday, 2 November, said that the company is shutting down its facial recognition system, which automatically identifies users in photos and videos, due to security concerns.

"We’re shutting down the Face Recognition system on Facebook. People who’ve opted in will no longer be automatically recognized in photos and videos and we will delete more than a billion people’s individual facial recognition templates."

Facebook's Vice President of Artificial Intelligence Jerome Pesenti

"This change will represent one of the largest shifts in facial recognition usage in the technology’s history," the company added.

Why has the feature been scrapped? What does it mean for users? Here's what we know.

Why Is the Facial Recognition Feature Being Shut Down?

Facebook has cited privacy concerns as the reason behind its decision.

"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. Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate."

Facebook

"Regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use. Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate," it further said.

What Will Be the Fallout?

More than a third of Facebook’s daily active users have opted for the Face Recognition setting that the platform offers, which enables the technology to identify the users based on their facial features.

The removal of this feature will lead to a number of changes.

• Facebook will no longer automatically recognise if people’s faces appear in memories, photos, or videos.

• Users will no longer be able to turn on face recognition for suggested tagging or see a suggested tag with their name in photos and videos they may appear in.

• This removal of the feature will also impact Automatic Alt Text (AAT), which creates image descriptions for visually-impaired people. After this change, AAT descriptions will no longer include the names of people recognised in photos.