Meta's new facial recognition helps recover accounts, spot fake ads
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Meta is gradually releasing facial recognition technology across Facebook and Instagram to help users locked out of their accounts and to spot scam ads that improperly use a celebrity's image.
Why it matters: This is the first major expansion of Meta's facial recognition system since its 2021 rollback.
Zoom in: Meta has started testing facial recognition to verify the identities of users who are locked out of their Facebook or Instagram accounts, Monika Bickert, Meta's vice president of content policy, told reporters.
- The company has also been running a test of the technology to spot so-called "celebrity bait ads," which often rely on AI-generated images of famous people to entice users into buying into whatever scam they're promoting.
- As of now, only a "small group of celebrities" are enrolled in the program, Bickert said.
How it works: To recover their accounts, will be able to upload a video recording of their face.
- Meta's facial recognition system will then compare that video to the profile pictures on the account the user is trying to access.
- Facial recognition isn't the only option. Users can still choose to upload photos of their ID cards or other official documents.
The intrigue: Meta is not deploying the technology in the European Union, the United Kingdom and a few other jurisdictions due to local data collection laws, Bickert said.
Flashback: In 2021, Meta shut down its decade-old facial recognition system and deleted the face data of more than one billion users.
- Back then, the technology was used to automatically identify people in photos and suggest "tags."
- But at the time, the company said it still saw facial recognition as a powerful tool to verify identities and prevent fraud.
The big picture: Cybercriminals have become scary good at hijacking people's Facebook and Instagram accounts in recent years.
- Typically, scammers will gain access to these accounts to help steal someone's identity, share posts about their scams or to extort a user into paying a ransom demand.
Between the lines: Meta has faced several lawsuits over its use of facial recognition in recent years.
- In July, the company agreed to pay $1.4 billion to settle a 2022 lawsuit with the state of Texas over the collection of users' biometric data.
- The company worked with policymakers, regulators and privacy and security experts worldwide before beginning the most recent tests, Bickert said.
What's next: Meta plans to roll out facial recognition for account recovery to all users over the next few months, depending on how initial testing goes.
- The company is expanding its celebrity bait ad tests in December to another group of celebrities, and in the meantime, Meta has started reaching out to other famous people to enroll them in the program.
