Facebook announced that in the coming weeks it will stop using its facial recognition technology, which allowed users to identify themselves automatically in photos and videos, and will erase the metadata of more than 1 billion people with whom the system worked.
This decision is part of a “company-wide movement to limit the use of facial recognition” in its products, as stated by Meta, Facebook’s parent company, in a statement.
More than a third of the daily active users of the social network had activated the facial recognition system in their accounts, with which the social network can automatically identify them in images and videos posted by others, as well as recommendations on who to tag.
With the withdrawal of this technology, which will take place in the coming weeks, Facebook will also eliminate the metadata that allowed its operation, and that referred to more than 1,000 million users.
Users will not be able to activate the feature manually again, and the change will also affect Automatic Alternative Text (AAT), which provides textual descriptions for people with low vision, and which will continue to detail how many people appear but not their identities.
The company stated its intention to continue working on facial recognition for different uses, such as verifying the identity of users or preventing fraud and identity theft.
K. Tovar
Source: ActualidadRT
