Why is Facebook shutting down its facial recognition system and deleting 'faceprints'?

Facebook has announced it is deleting about 1bn "faceprints" it used as part of a facial recognition system for photo tagging, citing concerns with the technology. Meta, the company formally known as Facebook, announced on Tuesday it would end its use of facial recognition technology in the coming weeks. A third of Facebook's users, or about 1 billion people, had opted into the service, Meta's vice-president of artificial intelligence Jerome Pesenti said. So is the company really concerned about people's privacy, or is it just a public relations move? When people opted in to allowing the use of facial recognition, Facebook scanned a "faceprint" of that user and used it to find photos and videos of them on the platform, and suggested tagging them.