Facebook to introduce facial recognition to up security
Social media giant Facebook wants to give its users a more secure experience, and to do so, it’s bringing in Facial recognition technology which will notify people whenever their photo is posted. The company made the announcement on Tuesday via a blog post, and claims that the new feature could reduce “some abusive conduct” on its network – although it may raise fresh privacy concerns. The announcement comes as Facebook has faced criticism from European regulators, amongst others, over the spread of fake news and extremist hate speech.
Facebook’s share price has risen by 54% year to date
SOURCE: Yahoo Finance
The new tech will build on Facebook’s existing facial recognition algorithms, which it uses to suggest tags for people in photos. As a basic service, the new feature will now tell users as soon as a picture is posted that includes them, and opt-in-or-out of it being tagged – provided the user in question is a part of the picture-poster’s audience.
An additional feature will let users know if anyone, anywhere on Facebook, tries to use their image as a profile picture. Joaquin Candela, Facebook’s director of applied machine learning, was direct about the company’s motives, saying: “we’re doing this to prevent people from impersonating others on Facebook.” Fake accounts – long a problem for Facebook – took on more relevance recently, as they were implicated in the spread of both fake news and hate speech.
However, there are limits to the technology. Nipun Mather, one of Facebook’s applied machine learning managers, explained: "If people have a hard time recognizing someone, then in those situations, computer vision will struggle too."
Disclosure
Dominion holds Facebook in its Global Trends Ecommerce Fund.
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