Meta is returning facial recognition technology to its apps more than three years after it shut down facebook's “facial recognition” system amid a broader backlash against the technology. Now, the social network will begin to roll out facial recognition tools on facebook and instagram to combat 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 fraudulent ads using the faces of celebrities and other public figures. “If our systems suspect that an ad may be a scam containing the image of a public figure at risk of celebrity baiting, we will attempt to use facial recognition technology to compare the faces in the ad to the facebook and instagram profile images of the ad. the public figure. ”Meta explained in a blog post. “If we confirm a match and that the ad is a scam, we will block it.”
The company said it has already started rolling out the feature to a small group of celebrities and public figures and will begin automatically enrolling more people in the feature “in the coming weeks,” although people have the ability to opt out. protection. While Meta already has systems in place to review ads for potential scams, the company can't always detect “celebrity bait” ads, as many legitimate companies use celebrities and public figures to market their products, Monika Bickert, vice president of content policy. in Meta, he said in a briefing. “This is a real-time process,” he said of the new facial recognition feature. “It's faster and more accurate than manual review.”
Separately, Meta is also testing facial recognition tools to address another long-standing problem on facebook and instagram: account recovery. The company is experimenting with a new “selfie video” option that allows users to upload a clip of themselves, which Meta will then compare to their profile photos, when users have been locked out of their accounts. The company will also use it in cases of suspected account compromise to prevent hackers from accessing accounts using stolen credentials.
The tool will not be able to help everyone who loses access to a facebook or instagram account. Many business pages, for example, do not include a person's profile photo, so those users would have to use Meta's existing account recovery options. But Bickert says the new process will make it much harder for bad actors to game the company's support tools. “It will be a much higher level of difficulty for them to try to bypass our systems,” Bickert said.
With both new features, Meta says it will “immediately delete” facial data used for comparisons and the scans will not be used for any other purpose. The company is also making the features optional, although celebrities will have to opt out of scam ad protection instead of opting in.
That could draw criticism from privacy advocates, particularly given Meta's complicated history with facial recognition. The company previously used the technology to power automatic photo tagging, allowing it to automatically recognize users' faces in photos and videos. The feature was discontinued. in 2021and Meta removed the facial data of more than a billion people, citing “growing societal concerns.” The company also faces lawsuits, especially from Texas and Illinois, over its use of the technology. Meta paid $650 million to settle a lawsuit related to the Illinois law and $1.4 billion to settle a similar lawsuit in Texas.
It's notable, then, that the new tools won't be available in either Illinois or Texas to begin with. It also will not be rolled out to users in the United Kingdom or the European Union, as the company “continues to have discussions there with regulators” in the region, according to Bickert. But the company “hopes to scale this technology globally sometime in 2025,” according to a Meta spokesperson.
