Current:Home > NewsFacebook to delete users' facial-recognition data after privacy complaints-LoTradeCoin
Facebook to delete users' facial-recognition data after privacy complaints
View Date:2024-12-24 07:16:28
Providence, R.I. — Facebook said it will shut down its face-recognition system and delete the faceprints of more than 1 billion people.
"This change will represent one of the largest shifts in facial recognition usage in the technology's history," said a blog post Tuesday from Jerome Pesenti, vice president of artificial intelligence for Facebook's new parent company, Meta. "Its removal will result in the deletion of more than a billion people's individual facial recognition templates."
He said the company was trying to weigh the positive use cases for the technology "against growing societal concerns, especially as regulators have yet to provide clear rules."
Facebook's about-face follows a busy few weeks for the company. On Thursday it announced a new name — Meta — for the company, but not the social network. The new name, it said, will help it focus on building technology for what it envisions as the next iteration of the internet — the "metaverse."
The company is also facing perhaps its biggest public relation crisis to date after leaked documents from whistleblower Frances Haugen showed that it has known about the harms its products cause and often did little or nothing to mitigate them.
More than a third of Facebook's daily active users have opted in to have their faces recognized by the social network's system. That's about 640 million people. But Facebook has recently begun scaling back its use of facial recognition after introducing it more than a decade ago.
The company in 2019 ended its practice of using face recognition software to identify users' friends in uploaded photos and automatically suggesting they "tag" them. Facebook was sued in Illinois over the tag suggestion feature.
Researchers and privacy activists have spent years raising questions about the technology, citing studies that found it worked unevenly across boundaries of race, gender or age.
Concerns also have grown because of increasing awareness of the Chinese government's extensive video surveillance system, especially as it's been employed in a region home to one of China's largely Muslim ethnic minority populations.
Some U.S. cities have moved to ban the use of facial recognition software by police and other municipal departments. In 2019, San Francisco became the first U.S. city to outlaw the technology, which has long alarmed privacy and civil liberties advocates.
Meta's newly wary approach to facial recognition follows decisions by other U.S. tech giants such as Amazon, Microsoft and IBM last year to end or pause their sales of facial recognition software to police, citing concerns about false identifications and amid a broader U.S. reckoning over policing and racial injustice.
President Joe Biden's science and technology office in October launched a fact-finding mission to look at facial recognition and other biometric tools used to identify people or assess their emotional or mental states and character.
European regulators and lawmakers have also taken steps toward blocking law enforcement from scanning facial features in public spaces, as part of broader efforts to regulate the riskiest applications of artificial intelligence.
veryGood! (7)
Related
- Democrat Ruben Gallego wins Arizona US Senate race against Republican Kari Lake
- Inside Clean Energy: Recycling Solar Panels Is a Big Challenge, but Here’s Some Recent Progress
- Progress in Baby Steps: Westside Atlanta Lead Cleanup Slowly Earns Trust With Help From Local Institutions
- One Year Later: The Texas Freeze Revealed a Fragile Energy System and Inspired Lasting Misinformation
- Man Found Dead in Tanning Bed at Planet Fitness Gym After 3 Days
- The dangers of money market funds
- The 43 Best 4th of July 2023 Sales You Can Still Shop: J.Crew, Good American, Kate Spade, and More
- Study: Pennsylvania Children Who Live Near Fracking Wells Have Higher Leukemia Risk
- Congress heard more testimony about UFOs: Here are the biggest revelations
- Trisha Paytas Responds to Colleen Ballinger Allegedly Sharing Her NSFW Photos With Fans
Ranking
- Horoscopes Today, November 11, 2024
- Disney Star CoCo Lee Dead at 48
- Ubiquitous ‘Forever Chemicals’ Increase Risk of Liver Cancer, Researchers Report
- Lululemon’s Olympic Challenge to Reduce Its Emissions
- College Football Playoff ranking release: Army, Georgia lead winners and losers
- Kate Spade 24-Hour Flash Deal: Get This $240 Crossbody Bag for Just $59
- Texas Activists Sit-In at DOT in Washington Over Offshore Oil Export Plans
- These are some of the people who'll be impacted if the U.S. defaults on its debts
Recommendation
-
Just Eat Takeaway sells Grubhub for $650 million, just 3 years after buying the app for $7.3 billion
-
Does the U.S. have too many banks?
-
With Build Back Better Stalled, Expanded Funding for a Civilian Climate Corps Hangs in the Balance
-
Inside Clean Energy: Here Come the Battery Recyclers
-
The results are in: Peanut the Squirrel did not have rabies, county official says
-
Four States Just Got a ‘Trifecta’ of Democratic Control, Paving the Way for Climate and Clean Energy Legislation
-
What to know about the federal appeals court hearing on mifepristone
-
What you need to know about the debt ceiling as the deadline looms