Why Facebook is putting its facial recognition tool in the closet – archyworldys

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Small earthquake in the tech world. Meta, the new name of Mark Zuckerberg’s company, announced on November 2 shutdown of the facial recognition system from Facebook. For Jerome Pesenti, the vice-president in charge of artificial intelligence and author of the announcement, it is even “one of the biggest bends “ of the history of facial recognition.

More moderately, the withdrawal of a Gafam on the subject is seen as a new victory for NGOs – as Electronic Frontier Foundation – which warn about the abuses of this technology. For now, regulators, American like french, have not finalized the framework for facial recognition. She still appears as a far west digital between algorithmic biases and malicious uses.

Until now, one billion Facebook users have authorized the use of the facial recognition tool introduced in December 2011 to be automatically recognized in photos and videos published on the platform. The interest? Make it easier for their friends to identify them in photos, or be notified when someone posts a photo of them.

No revenue from facial recognition

Unlike other tech giants – Microsoft, Amazon, IBM – who stopped their facial recognition tools before him, Facebook has never marketed its technology to a third party. It was just bringing additional functionalities to one of its products. As a reminder, 96% of Meta revenue come from advertising, and therefore indirectly from the time spent by its users on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. If the company can put facial recognition in the closet, one of the reasons is that it does not directly earn them revenue and is not essential to the operation of Facebook.

Concretely, Facebook will remove the “models” of the users, kinds of mathematical formula which summarize the properties of the face such as the distance of the eyes, the shape of the chin or the thickness of the lips … In theory, DeepFace, the Facebook tool, creates a unique template for each user, so that two people are never confused. But in practice, several tools of the same kind have failed to achieve this ideal functioning. In the case of the social network, identifying the wrong person in a photo would have negligible consequences, except that similar technologies are used in police cases, resulting in false accusations.

One less subject of tension

Facebook’s facial recognition tool was therefore criticized more by its existence, which could open the door to future abuses, than by its intended use. It was even cited – in a related way – as a concern in a investigation of the Federal Trade Commission, the US regulator, which led to the payment of a fine of $ 5 billion in 2020.

But the real problem is that trust in Facebook is at an all-time low today, and the company is not in a position where it can simply advance its good intentions on facial recognition without waiting to reviews in return.

The group faces a unprecedented scandal following a leak of documents organized by Frances Haugen, one of his former executives, who wants to raise the alarm on the abuses of the group. Named “Facebook Files”, the case exposes the inability of the social network to moderate content, or its role in the rise of extremism. Also, the company has issues to deal with more urgently than facial recognition.

Facebook is not giving up on facial recognition

If Facebook is going to turn off the feature and delete a billion models, it still keeps DeepFace, the advanced algorithm that orchestrated everything, according to the New York Times. And for good reason: this technological withdrawal is only temporary, and the group could reposition itself on less risky use cases.

“We must assess the weight of the positive use cases of facial recognition against growing societal concerns, especially since regulators have not yet provided clear rules“, writes Jerome Pesenti, vice president in charge of artificial intelligence at Facebook.

Meta still sees facial recognition as a “powerful tool“which could be used to verify the identity of a user or fight against fraud, cases of already existing use.”We believe that the use of facial recognition limited to a reduced number of case studies is appropriate“, he declares.

With the subject of facial recognition set aside for a while, Meta will be able to focus on the accusations surrounding the “Facebook Files”, and on its technological shift towards virtual reality. under the name of metaverse.

Facebook: the group will be called Meta