Why is Facebook scrapping facial recognition?
Facebook retires the facial recognition program. The social platform said it will delete its users' biometric data entirely after concerns about the potential misuse of the technology. Facts and insights
No more facial recognition on the Facebook social network, for now.
The company, now renamed Meta, announced on Tuesday that it will no longer use the technology that automatically identifies users in photos and videos, citing growing concerns about the use of such software.
"Regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing their use," Jerome Pesenti, Facebook's vice president of artificial intelligence, wrote in a blog post . "Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe it is appropriate to limit the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases."
The removal of facial recognition by the world's largest social media platform comes in the wake of pressures on the tech industry regarding this technology.
This year, Amazon announced that it would extend its moratorium on police use of its facial recognition software until further notice. Like Amazon, Microsoft also announced to suspend the sale of its technology to the police until the United States passes a law governing its use. The position of IBM, which definitively left the facial recognition sector last year, is different.
Facebook's move comes at a complicated time for the company founded by Mark Zuckerberg. The company has been facing a barrage of scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers since former manager Frances Haugen accused it of neglecting misinformation on its platforms and making profits on the security of its users.
All the details.
THE FACEBOOK (GOAL) DECISION ON FACIAL RECOGNITION
"In the coming weeks we will close the Face Recognition system on Facebook", reads the note.
Pesenti, Facebook's vice president of artificial intelligence, wrote that more than a third of the company's daily active users adhered to the setting. That's more than 643 million people, as Facebook had 1.93 billion daily active users in the third quarter of 2021.
Additionally, Facebook added that its automatic alt text tool – which creates image descriptions for visually impaired people – will no longer include the names of recognized people in photos after facial recognition is removed, but will function normally.
BIOMETRIC DATA DELETED
The removal will be implemented globally and is expected to be completed by December.
THE APPEAL OF ACTIVISTS FOR PRIVACY
Privacy and digital rights groups welcomed the move.
Although Facebook's action comes after moves by other tech companies, it could mark a "notable moment in the abandonment of facial recognition nationwide." Adam Schwartz, a senior lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is convinced of this.
Woodrow Hartzog, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University, toldCNN the decision a "victory". This move shows the need for continued privacy defense.
However, as the company won't stop working on facial recognition technology more generally, Hartzog warned it could come back at a later time. "Perhaps in a less obvious way but still dangerous for people," the professor stressed.
TECHNOLOGY UNDER THE LENS OF REGULATORS AND JUDGES
Not forgetting that facial recognition software has brought a number of problems to Facebook. In 2019, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission included it as a concern when it fined Facebook $ 5 billion for resolving privacy complaints.
Additionally, Facebook also paid $ 650 million to the state of Illinois for violating its biometric privacy law. As the United States still lacks a federal privacy law, the possibility of conflicting with different state laws persists. Today only Illinois, Texas, and Washington have state laws governing biometric privacy, Quartz recalls.
BUT FACEBOOK KEEPS ONE DOOR OPEN….
However, Facebook has not ruled out the use of facial recognition technology in other products.
“Looking ahead, we still see facial recognition technology as a powerful tool, for example, for people who need to verify their identity or to prevent fraud and impersonation,” Pesenti wrote.
Therefore, Facebook will explore the use of the technology in the future and publicly disclose those efforts, it announced on the blog.
THE CLEARVIEW CASE
So Facebook will delete their facial recognition data… but what about the Clearview AI database? That is the most talked about US company specializing in facial recognition technology.
The software developed by Clearview compares the image in a database of over 3 billion photos taken from Facebook, Youtube and other online sites. The company leapt to the news in early 2020 after the New York Times investigation that law enforcement in the United States, from the local police in Florida to the FBI to the Department of Homeland Security, would make use of its "app" for facial recognition.
As Corriere della Sera noted, Facebook, "which claims it has never sold individual biometric data to individuals or government agencies, will continue to allow independent companies such as Clearview AI, which provides facial recognition technologies to police and other federal agencies. , continue to train your algorithms using the huge accumulated database ”.
THE METAVERSE WILL COLLECT EVEN MORE DATA
Finally, the phasing out of facial recognition in the name of protecting users' personal data could only anticipate another more pervasive data collection.
As Quartz pointed out, “Silicon Valley's embrace of the metaverse could garner an unprecedented amount of information about its users in the not too distant future. The metaverse could acquire far more data about its users and how they interact with each other, valuable data for advertisers. VR is typically monitored with wearable goggles and gloves, which can detect and respond to motion, sound, and touch. So it won't just capture what we write, scroll and upload, but every move we make and how we interact with others ”.
The transition to the metaverse could pose a much bigger challenge than facial recognition.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/perche-facebook-rottama-il-riconoscimento-facciale/ on Wed, 03 Nov 2021 10:38:16 +0000.