Facebook to shut down its facial recognition system and delete facial templates of more than 1 billion people

Limiting the use of the technology to 'a narrow set of use cases' will be appropriate, it says

Facebook announced on Tuesday that it was shutting down its facial recognition system, which automatically identifies users in photos and videos, amid growing concerns about the misuse of the technology by governments, police and others.

Jerome Pesenti, vice president of artificial intelligence at Meta, Facebook's newly named parent company, said in a blog post that the company wants "to find the right balance" with the technology as there are many concerns about the place of such systems in the society.

He noted that regulators are yet to finalise a clear set of rules governing the use of facial recognition systems, and amid this ongoing uncertainty, Facebook believes that limiting the use of this technology to "a narrow set of use cases is appropriate."

As part of the change, Facebook will shutter a feature that was introduced in December 2010 and enabled the social media platform to automatically recognise people who appeared in other users' photo albums.

Using the feature, users could easily "tag" others in their photos with just a click.

Pesenti said that people who have opted in to Face Recognition setting will no longer be automatically identified in photos and videos.

"This change will represent one of the largest shifts in facial recognition usage in the technology's history. More than a third of Facebook's daily active users have opted in to our Face Recognition setting and are able to be recognised, and its removal will result in the deletion of more than a billion people's individual facial recognition templates."

While Facebook introduced the facial recognition feature more than a decade ago, it gradually made it easier for users to opt out as the company faced scrutiny from regulators and courts.

Pesenti said the change would also impact the Automatic Alt Text (AAT) feature that the platform uses to create image descriptions for people who are blind or visually impaired.

Although the social media giant plans to delete digital face-prints of more than one billion people, it will not abolish the software that powers the system. The company considers the facial recognition technology as a powerful tool and said it would continue working on these technologies and engaging outside experts.

Facial recognition systems have been the subject of much negative attention in recent years.

Critics cite multiple studies that have found the technology can suffer from race-, age- and ethnicity-related biases, and could lead to human rights abuses. They also argue that the technology has the potential to become an invasive form of surveillance.

Facebook's decision to close the facial recognition feature on its platform comes days after it emerged that the social media giant has been considering new products to target children as young as six years old.

NBC News said they accessed a set of documents from Facebook's internal blog which said that the company was looking to hire new employees with an aim to offer its entire line of products to users below the current threshold of 13 years.

Former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen has provided thousands of Facebook's documents to lawmakers and regulators since leaving the company in May.

Speaking at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon this week, Ms Haugen urged Mark Zuckerberg to step down as Facebook CEO, saying it was "unlikely the company will change" if he remains the company chief.

She said it was "unconscionable" that Facebook is currently investing to build its virtual metaverse environment while the company's own documents state that "there need to be more resources on very basic safety systems".

Last week, Mark Zuckerberg renamed Facebook's parent company as Meta, saying the change would help the company to turn its focus away from social media and towards the metaverse, or 'embodied internet'.

He added that the company will now be "metaverse-first, not Facebook-first."