Facebook has said it will shut down its facial recognition software that automatically recognizes people’s photos and videos posted to the social network. This will definitely mark a massive shift in the tech industry and for Facebook, being known to collect numerous data from its users.
The announcement came via a blog post by the artificial intelligence vice president, Jerome Pesenti where he explained that the world’s largest social network will shutter its facial-recognition system in the coming weeks “as part of a company-wide move to limit the use of facial recognition in our products.”
“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.” He also added ” We need to weigh the positive use cases for facial recognition against growing societal concerns, especially as regulators have yet to provide clear rules.
The halting of Facebook’s facial recognition software will also mean that Facebook’s automatically generated descriptions of images for the visually impaired will no longer add names from those who were recognized in pictures. Jerome Pesenti wrote.
