Facebook Scrubs Facial Recognition System Amid Growing Privacy, Racial Bias Concerns

Facebook has revealed that it will no longer employ facial recognition technologies to identify faces in images and videos.

Questions concerning the ethics of facial recognition technology have grown, with concerns voiced about privacy, racial bias, and accuracy.

Facebook, which changed its name to Meta in late October, has also stated that it intends to delete the data obtained through its usage of this software, which is linked to over a billion people's faces.

The change was disclosed in a blog post by artificial intelligence vice president Jerome Pesenti and is "part of a company-wide move to limit the use of facial recognition in our products."

Regulators and lawmakers are increasingly putting pressure on Facebook, which also owns Instagram and the messaging service Whatsapp.

Officials are scrutinizing it more closely, notably the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which has filed an antitrust lawsuit accusing it of anticompetitive conduct.

A former employee also accused the company of unethical behavior last month. Frances Haugen published a cache of internal documents alleging that Facebook prioritized profits over user safety.

Haugen's allegations, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, are part of a coordinated campaign to "paint a false picture" of the company.

However, Facebook will continue to develop facial recognition technology and may utilize it in future products ranging from social networks to a futuristic pair of picture-taking glasses.

"Looking ahead, we still see facial recognition technology as a powerful tool, for example, for people needing to verify their identity, or to prevent fraud and impersonation," Pesenti wrote.

According to Pesenti, ceasing the use of facial-recognition software will also mean that Facebook's automatically generated descriptions of photographs for the visually impaired will no longer include names of persons who were recognized in photos.

As concerns about the accuracy of facial recognition software grow, it has become a point of conflict. For example, the technology has been demonstrated to be less accurate when it comes to identifying people of color, and at least a few Black males have been erroneously arrested as a result of the application of facial recognition.

While there is no national regulation governing the use of the technology, an increasing number of states and cities are enacting their own policies to limit or prohibit its application.