After more than three years of discontinuing facial recognition technology, Meta plans to reintroduce it into its applications. In 2017, the company shut down Facebook's "facial recognition" system amid widespread opposition. However, in a recent update, Meta announced it will start deploying facial recognition tools on Facebook and Instagram with the aim of combating fraud activities and assisting users who have lost access to their accounts.
Combating Fraudulent Activities
The initial test will employ facial recognition technology to identify fraudulent advertisements that use the likenesses of celebrities and other public figures. Meta detailed this process in a blog post: "If our system suspects that an advertisement may involve a celebrity bait scam, we will attempt to use facial recognition technology to compare the faces in the ad with the profile pictures of the respective celebrity on Facebook and Instagram. Once a match is confirmed and the ad is deemed fraudulent, we will immediately block the advertisement."
Meta has already provided this feature to a select number of celebrities and public figures and plans to automatically enable it for more users in the "coming weeks," though individuals can opt out of this protective feature. Although Meta has established a system to check for potential fraudulent advertisements, not all "celebrity bait" ads can be detected, as many legitimate companies also use celebrities and public figures for product marketing. Monika Bickert, Meta's Vice President of Content Policy, stated in a briefing that this is a real-time process, and the new facial recognition feature is faster and more accurate than manual reviews.
Resolving Account Recovery Issues
Additionally, Meta is testing facial recognition tools to address another long-standing issue on Facebook and Instagram: account recovery. The company is experimenting with a new "video selfie" option, which allows users to upload video clips of themselves. Meta will then match these videos with the user's profile photos to assist users who are unable to access their accounts due to being locked out. Simultaneously, this feature will be used in cases where an account is suspected of being compromised, to prevent hackers from accessing accounts with stolen credentials.
It is important to note that this tool will not assist every user who loses access to their Facebook or Instagram accounts. For instance, many business pages do not have individual profile photos, so these users will need to utilize Meta's existing account recovery options. However, Bickert stated that the new process will make it more difficult for bad actors to bypass the company's support tools.
Meta also announced that facial data used for comparison will be "deleted immediately" and that these scans will not be used for any other purposes. Moreover, these features are optional, but celebrities must choose to opt out of the fraud advertisement protection feature rather than opting in.
Privacy Advocates' Concerns
For privacy advocates, Meta's move may attract criticism, especially given the company's troubled history with facial recognition technology. Previously, Meta utilized the technology to automatically tag photos, allowing for the automatic identification of users' faces in photos and videos. However, the feature was discontinued in 2021, and Meta deleted facial data of over a billion individuals due to "increasing societal concerns." Moreover, Meta has faced lawsuits from the states of Texas and Illinois over its use of this technology, leading the company to pay $650 million and $1.4 billion respectively to settle these lawsuits.
These new tools will initially not be available in Illinois or Texas. According to Bickert, they will also not be promoted to users in the UK or the EU, as Meta is "continuing to engage in discussions with regulators in those regions." However, a Meta spokesperson stated that the company "aims to expand this technology globally by 2025."
