Meta recently announced the return of facial recognition technology to Facebook and Instagram as part of its toolset to protect users against scams or to assist them in regaining access to an account.
If facial recognition on Facebook sounds familiar that’s because the company first tried to integrate the tech three years ago but ultimately pulled the plug when it faced substantial public backlash. Presumably everyone has forgotten about that now.
Facial recognition makes a return
Meta’s first attempt at using facial recognition involved users being automatically recognised in photos posted on the platform or named in an ‘Automatic Alt Text’ feature which added descriptions to images for the visually impaired. Back then, the company said it decided to pull the ‘feature’ after weighing the positive use cases for the tech against “growing societal concerns”.
Now though, Meta is focusing more on using your biometric data to your benefit – because of course it would say that.
“If our systems suspect that an ad may be a scam that contains the image of a public figure at risk for celeb-bait, we will try to use facial recognition technology to compare faces in the ad to the public figure’s Facebook and Instagram profile pictures. If we confirm a match and determine the ad is a scam, we’ll block it,” reads Meta’s blog post.
The post adds that Meta will “immediately delete any facial data generated from ads for this one-time comparison” and that it won’t “use it for any other purpose”.
Additionally, Meta is testing its ‘new’ facial recognition tech to help people who’ve lost access to their Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Whether you’ve forgotten your password, lost your device, or been duped into giving your details to a scammer, if the company thinks your account has been compromised you’ll need to verify your identity by uploading an official ID document to regain access.
To that end, Meta is testing “video selfies” as another means of identity verification. The new tech will compare a video of your face to your profile picture and determine if you’re the rightful account owner. Meta says this video “will be encrypted and stored securely. It will never be visible on [your] profile, to friends or to other people on Facebook or Instagram.”
And like before, the company will “immediately delete any facial data generated after this comparison regardless of whether there’s a match or not.” There’s no mention of a pinky-swear but it’s heavily implied.
The blog post says its video selfie “will ultimately be harder for hackers to abuse” but it doesn’t say how it plans to stop someone who’s gained access to your account from changing your profile picture to one of theirs.
We’re going to assume that someone at this 1.46-trillion-dollar company already thought of that, but you know what they say about assumptions.