Facebook to shutter its facial recognition system, citing 'societal concerns'

Facebook is shutting down its facial recognition program and deleting more than 1 billion users' faceprints, a company official said Tuesday. The move means more than one-third of Facebook's daily active users – about 640 million people – who have opted into the social network's facial recognition option no longer will be automatically recognized in photos and videos, said Jerome Pesenti, vice president of artificial intelligence at Meta, the newlynamed parent company of Facebook, in a blog post. Also affected: Facebook's automatic alt text system, which uses facial recognition and artificial intelligence to give those who are blind or visually impaired descriptions of images that let them know when they or a friend are in an image. Facebook is taking this action, Pesenti said, because "the many specific instances where facial recognition can be helpful need to be weighed against growing concerns about the use of this technology as a whole." In addition to societal concerns about how facial recognition may be used, "regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use," he said.