United States Customs and Border Protection is asking tech companies to send pitches for a real-time facial recognition tool that would take photos of every single person in a vehicle at a border crossing, including anyone in the back seats, and match them to travel documents, according to a document posted in a federal register last week. The request for information, or RIF, says that CBP already has a facial recognition tool that takes a picture of a person at a port of entry and compares it to travel or identity documents that someone gives to a border officer, as well as other photos from those documents already "in government holdings." "Biometrically confirmed entries into the United States are added to the traveler's crossing record," the document says. An agency under the Department of Homeland Security, CBP says that its facial recognition tool "is currently operating in the air, sea, and land pedestrian environments." The agency's goal is to bring it to "the land vehicle environment."

Meta is bringing facial recognition tech back to its apps more than three years after it shut down Facebook's "face recognition" system amid a broader backlash against the technology. Now, the social network will begin to deploy facial recognition tools on Facebook and Instagram to fight scams and help users who have lost access to their accounts, the company said in an update. The first test will use facial recognition to detect scam ads that use the faces of celebrities and other public figures. "If our systems suspect that an ad may be a scam that contains the image of a public figure at risk for celeb-bait, we will try to use facial recognition technology to compare faces in the ad against the public figure's Facebook and Instagram profile pictures," Meta explained in a blog post. "If we confirm a match and that the ad is a scam, we'll block it."

As an outspoken proponent to properly regulate facial recognition technology, MicrosoftMSFT announced it would get rid of its A.I. tools in this space. A.I. is still the most disputed part of technology and is becoming increasingly more commonplace as companies look to incorporate it across their platforms. Now, Microsoft is finally putting an end to its role in the potential for abuse that facial recognition technology has, which could lead to incidents of racial profiling. Following a two year review, and 27-page document, the tech giant wants to have tighter controls of its artificial intelligence products. CultureBanx reported that in the past Microsoft has asked governments around the world to regulate the use of facial recognition technology.

Microsoft is restricting access to its facial recognition tools, citing risks to society that the artificial intelligence systems could pose. The tech company released a 27-page "Responsible AI Standard" on Tuesday that details the company's goals toward equitable and trustworthy AI. To align with the standard, Microsoft is limiting access to facial recognition tools in Azure Face API, Computer Vision and Video Indexer. "We recognize that for AI systems to be trustworthy, they need to be appropriate solutions to the problems they are designed to solve," wrote Natasha Crampton, chief responsible AI officer at Microsoft, in a blog post. She added the company would retire its Azure services that infer "emotional states and identity attributes such as gender, age, smile, facial hair, hair, and makeup."

Microsoft is overhauling its artificial intelligence ethics policies and will no longer let companies use its technology to do things such as infer emotion, gender or age using facial recognition technology, the company has said. As part of its new "responsible AI standard", Microsoft says it intends to keep "people and their goals at the centre of system design decisions". The high-level principles will lead to real changes in practice, the company says, with some features being tweaked and others withdrawn from sale. Microsoft's Azure Face service, for instance, is a facial recognition tool that is used by companies such as Uber as part of their identity verification processes. Now, any company that wants to use the service's facial recognition features will need to actively apply for use, including those that have already built it into their products, to prove they are matching Microsoft's AI ethics standards and that the features benefit the end user and society.

Microsoft is overhauling its artificial intelligence ethics policies and will no longer let companies use its technology to do things such as infer emotion, gender or age using facial recognition technology, the company has said. As part of its new "responsible AI standard", Microsoft says it intends to keep "people and their goals at the centre of system design decisions". The high-level principles will lead to real changes in practice, the company says, with some features being tweaked and others withdrawn from sale. Microsoft's Azure Face service, for instance, is a facial recognition tool that is used by companies such as Uber as part of their identity verification processes. Now, any company that wants to use the service's facial recognition features will need to actively apply for use, including those that have already built it into their products, to prove they are matching Microsoft's AI ethics standards and that the features benefit the end user and society.

Clearview has built a product no other company has been willing to build, because of its dangerousness, and this settlement vindicates the decision

With the help of a facial recognition system, federal agents could capture a man suspected of abuse. The tool detected him in the background of someone else's photo at the gym, in the mirror. So, the agents were able to get to that gym, ask about the man, and eventually capture him. This real-life story, and many others, encourage businesses to benefit from AI services and deploy facial recognition systems. The global facial recognition market size was evaluated at $3.8 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach $8.5 billion in 2025, growing at a CAGR of 17.2%.

Multiple federal agencies that employ law enforcement personnel used facial recognition technology designed and owned by non-government entities in recent years--and 10 deployed systems made by the controversial company, Clearview AI. In a 92-page report addressed to Congress and publicly released Tuesday, the Government Accountability Office offers details on a range of government implementations of the biometric technology. GAO Director for Homeland Security and Justice Gretta Goodwin confirmed that Reps. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., and Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., Chris Coons, D-Del., Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Ron Wyden D-Ore., asked GAO to steer the study. "A goal of this project was to provide the'lay of the land' in terms of federal law enforcement's use of facial recognition technology," she told Nextgov Tuesday.

Pressure on US lawmakers to create federal regulations on facial recognition has been mounting. IBM, Amazon, and Microsoft stopped selling the technology to US police, and called on Congress to regulate its use. Amidst international protests against racism and police misconduct, news broke that Detroit police had wrongfully arrested a Black man based on a faulty facial recognition match. In response, House Democrats proposed a bill last week that would ban police from using facial recognition. Against that backdrop, industry groups have quietly lobbied to soften regulations and avoid an outright ban.