Facebook announced that it is discontinuing its use of facial recognition, including for visually impaired users. Facebook has left the door open to investigating on-device facial recognition technologies that do not communicate with a remote server.
Facebook cited general public concern about the use of facial recognition, as well as a lack of agreed-upon regulations and standards, as one of the reasons they chose to discontinue the use of facial recognition.
According to the announcement:
“There are many concerns about the place of facial recognition technology in society, and regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use. Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate.”
Face Recognition on Facebook
Facial recognition technology was used to identify users from photos in the Memories feature, as well as photos and videos. Tagging, in which individuals name friends in an image, will remain permitted.
Those who have agreed to allow Facebook to use facial recognition do not need to do anything; Facebook will automatically delete the “template” used to recognize the members.
Facebook noted:
“People will no longer be able to turn on face recognition for suggested tagging or see a suggested tag with their name in photos and videos they may appear in. We’ll still encourage people to tag posts manually, to help you and your friends know who is in a photo or video.
If you have opted into our Face Recognition setting, we will delete the template used to identify you. If you have the face recognition setting turned off, there is no template to delete and there will be no change.”
While many may see this as a positive change, those who are visually impaired and rely on automatic facial recognition to tell them who is in a photo shared on Facebook may feel the impact more acutely.
According to Facebook:
“This change will also impact Automatic Alt Text (AAT), a technology used to create image descriptions for people who are blind or visually impaired. AAT currently identifies people in about 4% of photos. After the change, AAT will still be able to recognize how many people are in a photo, but will no longer attempt to identify who each person is using facial recognition.”
Facebook’s facial recognition technology isn’t going away.
Facebook has stated that it will investigate ways to use facial recognition in useful ways while respecting users’ privacy.
Potential applications include people who need to verify their identity, especially if they are locked out of their account.
The use of facial recognition technology on the device without access to external servers was mentioned as an area to be investigated.
According to Facebook:
“Facial recognition can be particularly valuable when the technology operates privately on a person’s own devices. This method of on-device facial recognition, requiring no communication of face data with an external server, is most commonly deployed today in the systems used to unlock smartphones.
We believe this has the potential to enable positive use cases in the future that maintain privacy, control and transparency, and it’s an approach we’ll continue to explore as we consider how our future computing platforms and devices can best serve people’s needs.
The changes we’re announcing today involve a company-wide move away from this kind of broad identification, and toward narrower forms of personal authentication.”
Facebook to Explore On-device Facial Recognition
On-Device use of facial recognition is a popular and widely accepted application of technology, such as unlocking a device. Aside from that, some may be uncomfortable with it, and Facebook’s decision to discontinue facial recognition may be a sign of Facebook’s recognition that they may need to be proactive in order to avoid overextending technology in ways that may raise privacy concerns.
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