Whoa, the plot thickens.
From Recode, November 3:
The social network is scaling back facial recognition, but similar technology could show up in the metaverse.
Facebook says it will stop using facial recognition for photo-tagging. In a Monday blog post, Meta, the social network’s new parent company, announced that the platform will delete the facial templates of more than a billion people and shut off its facial recognition software, which uses an algorithm to identify people in photos they upload to Facebook. This decision represents a major step for the movement against facial recognition, which experts and activists have warned is plagued with bias and privacy problems.
But Meta’s announcement comes with a couple of big caveats. While Meta says that facial recognition isn’t a feature on Instagram and its Portal devices, the company’s new commitment doesn’t apply to its metaverse products, Meta spokesperson Jason Grosse told Recode. In fact, Meta is already exploring ways to incorporate biometrics into its emerging metaverse business, which aims to build a virtual, internet-based simulation where people can interact as avatars. Meta is also keeping DeepFace, the sophisticated algorithm that powers its photo-tagging facial recognition feature.
“We believe this technology has the potential to enable positive use cases in the future that maintain privacy, control, and transparency, and it’s an approach we’ll continue to explore as we consider how our future computing platforms and devices can best serve people’s needs,” Grosse told Recode. “For any potential future applications of technologies like this, we’ll continue to be public about intended use, how people can have control over these systems and their personal data, and how we’re living up to our responsible innovation framework.”
That facial recognition for photo-tagging is leaving Facebook, also known as the “big blue app,” is certainly significant. Facebook originally launched this tool in 2010 to make its photo-tagging feature more popular. The idea was that letting an algorithm automatically suggest tagging a particular person in a photo would make it easier than manually tagging them and, perhaps, encourage more people to tag their friends. The software is informed by the photos people post of themselves, which Facebook uses to create unique facial templates tied to their profiles. The DeepFace artificial intelligence technology, which was developed from pictures uploaded by Facebook users, helps match people’s facial templates to faces in different photos.
Privacy experts raised concerns immediately after the feature launched. Since then, pivotal studies from researchers like Joy Buolamwini, Timnit Gebru, and Deb Raji have also shown that facial recognition can have baked-in racial and gender bias, and is particularly less accurate for women with darker skin. In response to growing opposition to the technology, Facebook made the facial recognition feature opt-in in 2019. The social media network also agreed to pay a $650 million settlement last year after a lawsuit claimed the tagging tool violated Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act....
....MUCH MORE
Not being a Facebooker I didn't pay much attention to their use of facial recognition," hey, if someone wants to opt-in whatevs", until 2018's "Facebook Is Buying Detailed Data On Users Offline Lives (you can log in but can never log out) FB" and realized "Hell, they're probably tagging every person in every picture whether they use FB or not."
So when techmeister Tiernan Ray posted an article at ZD Net, which we titled "This Might Be Important: Facebook Wants To Be The AI of the Metaverse (FB)" I started paying attention.
