Back in 2021, Meta announced that it was shutting down its Face Recognition system for Facebook. This only meant that if you have photos with lots of friends in them, you’ll have to tag them manually rather than have the platform do it for you. Now, it looks like the feature is not only coming back to Facebook, but it will also be added to Instagram.
This time though, Meta says that it is using the Face Recognition tech to help fight scams and to help people regain access to their own accounts if they get locked out. On the former, the company is targeting specifically scam ads that uses faces of public figures for fake endorsement.
These “celeb-bait” ads will be put through the affected public figure’s profile pictures on both Facebook and Instagram. If the Face Recognition tech gets a match, and the ad ends up actually being a scam, Meta will block it, and all following facial data generated for this “one-time comparison” will be erased. Said public figures can also opt out of being scanned by the tech, if they so choose.
As for the latter, Meta says that users with compromised accounts can regain access using Face Recogntion as a new verification method. While going through the recovery process, the option to take a video selfie, and to have it be verified by the tech rather than a manual review will be made available. Here, facial data will be deleted as well, regardless of whether there’s a match or not.
This is of course contingent on the affected accounts being personal ones and having had profile photos uploaded. With that in mind, business accounts probably won’t be able to use this method. And while the post says the feature is being tested, there’s no mention of when it will be available to the general user base.
(Source: Meta)
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