How Amazon's Moratorium on Facial Recognition Tech Is Different From IBM's and Microsoft's

Just two weeks ago, facial recognition technology seemed unstoppable. At the beginning of this year, for instance, news reports cast a light on the secretive company Clearview AI, which scraped social media sites for photos to build a database of more than more than 3 billion photos, sold to law enforcement. Then came a sea change: On Monday, in a letter to Congress, IBM announced it would stop the sale of "general purpose" facial recognition software. On Wednesday, Amazon announced a one-year moratorium on police use of its Rekognition technology by law enforcement, inviting Congress to "put in place stronger regulations to govern the ethical use" of the technology. Amazon in its statement said that, "Congress appears ready to take on this challenge," referring to the mounting pressure to make fundamental changes to U.S. law enforcement following the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police, and law enforcement's heavy-handed and violent response to the Black Lives Matter protests.