Facebook is shutting down its facial recognition system amid growing societal concerns about the technology.
The social media platform will be deleting the individual facial recognition templates of more than a billion people, which means that they will no longer be automatically recognised in photos and videos.
“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,” Jerome Pesenti, vice president of artificial intelligence at Facebook’s new parent company Meta Platforms, Inc., wrote in a blog post.
“Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate.”
Facebook still regards facial recognition technology as a powerful tool for verifying identity and to prevent fraud and impersonation and will continue working on these technologies, Pesenti said.
Last year, Facebook paid a settlement of US$650mln in a long-running lawsuit over its use of scanning and tagging photos.
The social media giant has also come under pressure following the release of internal documents by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen, which has raised concerns about how the company keeps its users safe.