Facebook Ends Use of Face Scanning Amid Societal Concerns

Facebook is “shutting down” its face scanning system, Vice President-AI Jerome Pesenti announced Tuesday “as part of a company-wide move to limit the use of facial recognition in our products.” Users who opted into the technology won’t be automatically recognized in photos and videos, and Facebook will “delete more than a billion people’s individual facial recognition templates,” he said. That includes more than a third of the platform's users. “We need to weigh the positive use cases for facial recognition against growing societal concerns, especially as regulators have yet to provide clear rules,” he said.