In a blog article on Tuesday, Meta announced that it will resume testing its facial recognition technology three years after shutting it down and deleting the faceprints of over 1 billion people amid significant privacy concerns. This new initiative aims to combat what it calls "celeb bait" scams by enrolling approximately 50,000 public figures. The trial will involve automatically comparing the profile pictures of these individuals with images used in suspected scam adverts. Where a match is found, Meta will block the misleading ads. Meta said that the public figures would be notified about their participation and may opt-out if they prefer not to be involved.
Monika Bickert, Meta's vice president of content policy, highlighted the company's commitment to protecting public figures whose likenesses are misused. In addition,
The trial is set for a global rollout in December; however, the UK, EU, South Korea, and the US states of Texas and Illinois will be excluded pending regulatory approval. In a statement given to TechCrunch, Meta spokesman Andrew Devoy said: We are engaging with the UK regulator [Information Commissioner's Office (ICO)], policymakers, and other experts while testing moves forward... We'll continue to seek feedback from experts and make adjustments as the features evolve."
Meta confirmed that its facial recognition tool has undergone an extensive internal privacy and risk review process and has been discussed with external regulators and privacy experts. As such, any facial data generated for these comparisons will be deleted immediately, regardless of whether a scam is confirmed.
Meta also said that it plans to explore the use of facial recognition data to assist non-celebrity users in regaining access to compromised Facebook and Instagram accounts.
What is this page?
You are reading a summary article on the Privacy Newsfeed, a free resource for DPOs and other professionals with privacy or data protection responsibilities helping them stay informed of industry news all in one place. The information here is a brief snippet relating to a single piece of original content or several articles about a common topic or thread. The main contributor is listed in the top left-hand corner, just beneath the article title.
The Privacy Newsfeed monitors over 300 global publications, of which more than 5,750 summary articles have been posted to the online archive dating back to the beginning of 2020. A weekly roundup is available by email every Friday.
