Meta Restarts Facial Recognition Tech While Clearview AI Can Identify From One Picture

“We’re shutting down the Face Recognition system on Facebook. People who’ve opted in will no longer be automatically recognized in photos and videos and we will delete more than a billion people’s individual facial recognition templates.”

This is how Meta began the statement that revealed it was shutting down the use of its facial recognition technology on Facebook. The company-wide move came as the social networking giant wanted to “limit the use of facial recognition” in its products.

This news release was published by the company on November 2, 2021.

Now, almost three years later, the company is bringing its facial recognition technology back!

The return comes as Meta says it’s testing the use of facial recognition technology to
 

1. help protect its users and other people from celeb-bait ads and

2. facilitate faster account recovery.

Celeb-bait gets its name from the process where scammers use images of public figures, content creators and celebrities or impersonate them to direct them to scam websites, transfer money, buy bogus products, share personal information or the like.

While some celebrities are used in illegitimate ads and those ads are made to look extremely real, they remain tough to detect. Yet, Meta has numerous techniques and technologies in place to help detect such ads through an automated process.

“This automated process includes analysis of the different components of an ad, such as the text, image or video.”

Meta’s new technique to detect celeb-bait scams with images of public figures includes using facial recognition technology to compare faces in the ad to the public figure’s Facebook and Instagram profile pictures. If the images match and the ad is suspected to be a scam by its system, then the ad will be blocked.

Furthermore, any facial data generated from the ads will be immediately deleted.

As per Meta, early testing with a small group of public figures showed promising results in improving scam detection and enforcement. In the coming weeks, Meta will notify more impacted public figures about being enrolled in this protection, with the option to opt out anytime.

When it comes to helping users get their accounts back, Meta recognizes that users may lose access to Facebook or Instagram due to forgotten passwords, device loss or scams. To regain access, Meta requires identity verification through an official ID or certificate.

Here, Meta is testing video selfies as a new method for identity verification in compromised accounts and facial recognition will compare the video selfie with the account's profile pictures.

This process isn’t new and is similar to identity verification used for unlocking phones or accessing apps.

Speaking about the move, David Agranovich, director of global threat disruption at Meta, said, "This process is done in real time and is faster and much more accurate than manual human reviews, so it allows us to apply our enforcement policies more quickly and to protect people on our apps from scams and celebrities."


On the end of the facial recognition technology spectrum, revolutionary, all-in-one, facial recognition platform Clearview AI boasts its platform’s superior capabilities, which is bringing up concerns for privacy regulators.

As per a report, Clearview AI’s platform can spot where all a person’s face appears on the internet by using just one photograph as its reference point.

Not just this, it could reveal personal details such as the person’s name, places visited and other key information.

With a 98.6% success rate, the platform has made a name for itself (or rather was kept a secret and was sold to police departments).

However, its capabilities are built from speculations that the company had scraped billions of photos from social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and other databases to create its mighty app.

Needless to say, its ability to link a person’s image to their digital footprint sparked widespread debate among privacy advocates and lawmakers alike. They raised concerns that outlined how such technology could be used to undermine personal privacy, with individuals' data being harvested without consent.

As governments and regulatory bodies scrambled to address these issues, many began questioning the ethical boundaries of facial recognition, asking if Clearview AI’s methods were a step too far.

What do you think of facial recognition technology and do you think it should be banned for public use?

Do you think Meta is making the right move by bringing it back and do you think Clearview AI should be monitored by regulatory bodies to ensure the ethical use of facial recognition technology?

Let us know in the comments below!