Three years after the program was completely shut down, Meta is relaunching the development of facial recognition on Facebook. For what reasons? Are you going to be impacted? Here’s what you need to know.
Credits: 123RF
Do you remember the time when put a photo on Facebook triggered the automatic recognition of people present on it ? Ditto for a video elsewhere. This process was made possible thanks to the facial recognition. All users of the social network were in fact part of a gigantic database containing theassociation between their face and their profile name.
This was also used to identify yourself on the site or application. But faced with growing concerns about privacy, Metathe parent company behind Facebook, decides in 2021 to end facial recognition on its service. She takes the opportunity to erase the associated information, which concerns at the time more than a billion Internet users still. Since then, the technology has never been talked about on the platform again. Until today.
Why Meta is relaunching facial recognition on Facebook
Meta officially announces the return of facial recognition to Facebook. However, it is much more targeted than a few years ago, and for good reason: its goal is to detect fake advertisements featuring celebrities. Generated byartificial intelligencethese are for example those which feature Taylor Swift extolling the merits of a brand of kitchen utensils.
In fact, 50,000 “public figures” will participate by default in a test aimed at compare their Facebook profile photos to images used in fraudulent ads. If there is a match and Meta considers the ad to be a scam, the ad will be blocked. Everyone involved will be notified and can choose to decline the use of their face if they wish.
The system will be gradually rolled out from December, knowing that areas where Meta has not received regulatory authorization will be excluded. This includes theEuropean Union and therefore the France. Mark Zuckerberg’s firm also wants reintroduce facial recognition for ordinary usersbut only for recover access to a hacked or locked Facebook/Instagram account after forgetting the password.
Source : Reuters
