A Facebook technology used by a billion people around the world is about to disappear: here’s why we have to say goodbye to face recognition in photos and videos
Automatic face recognition is one of Facebook’s most divisive features: on the one hand, it’s a symbol of artificial intelligence in action and its ability to connect people by recognizing their faces and helping us “tag” them in photos; on the other, it’s a symbol of the control tech companies exert over our personal data.
For someone, however, the problem does not arise anymore and for all the others it will not arise anymore soon: Facebook has decided to disable this technology globally, so face recognition does not work anymore for many users (and it will not work for everyone, in a short time). Along with face recognition also jumps a second technology, victim of friendly fire: the Automatic Alt Text (AAT), which automatically generates a description of the content of photos to facilitate the blind and people with visual impairments in general. But why did Facebook “turn off” facial recognition?
Stop Facial Recognition: why
Since 2017, facial recognition on Facebook has become an “opt-in” technology, meaning that it must be enabled manually because it is disabled by default. According to Meta (the new name of Facebook’s holding company), more than a third of the social’s users (i.e., nearly 1 billion people worldwide) have decided to keep it enabled.
All of these people, however, will now have to do without it because face recognition is increasingly a technology targeted by criticism from privacy advocates and, more importantly for Meta, by governments halfway around the world through their respective Privacy Authorities.
Ecco, allora, che Facebook blocca la funzione e ammette: “Dobbiamo soppesare i casi d’uso positivi per il riconoscimento facciale rispetto alle crescenti preoccupazioni della società, soprattutto perché i regolatori devono ancora fornire regole chiare“.
Stop al riconoscimento facciale: cosa cambia
Lo stop al riconoscimento facciale significa che i servizi da esso abilitati verranno rimossi nelle prossime settimane, così come l’impostazione che consente alle persone di aderire al sistema. Nello specifico, ecco cosa cambia:
- Facebook non potrà più riconoscere le facce delle persone nelle memorie, nelle foto e nei video
- Gli utenti non potranno più attivare il riconoscimento facciale per il tag automatico dei contatti
- Verrà disabilitata la tecnologia Automatic Alt Text (AAT)
- I dati di coloro che aveva accettato il riconoscimento facciale verranno cancellati