Facebook announces shutting down its facial recognition system

KATHMANDU: Facebook has announced that it will be shutting down its facial recognition system.

Facebook’s Vice-President Artificial Intelligence Jerome Pesenti made the announcement.

Pesenti said that people would no longer be automatically recognized in pictures and videos.

“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,” the statement said.

This move is also likely to affect Automatic Alt Text (AAT), which creates image descriptions for blind and visually-impaired people.

“But the many specific instances where facial recognition can be helpful need to be weighed against growing concerns about the use of this technology as a whole. There are many concerns about the place of facial recognition technology in society, and regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use.

Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate…” the statement further said.