The move by Facebook to enable facial recognition across the entire social networking site has raised some eyebrows and probably some legal woes due to its privacy implications. Facebook announced that it was working to simply the process of users tagging photos of their family members and friends. In order to achieve this, it has been rolling out the facial recognition technology quietly to a test group across this world’s biggest social media network since late last year.
The move, revealed by Facebook in an update to the data use policy, is intended to enhance the performance of the Tag Suggest feature. This feature utilizes facial recognition technology to speed up the process of tagging friends and acquaintances who are in photos posted on the social network. The technology automatically identifies faces in the newly updated photos through comparing them to previous snapshots where the users had been tagged.
This implies that Facebook’s system will be capable of recognizing the faces of its over 500 million users worldwide. The firm will be capable of identifying you simply by the face. The company also noted that beginning in just a number of weeks, its system shall scan all the photos posted on Facebook and will provide the names of the individuals who appear on the frame. All the users of Facebook are being automatically added into the database. This facial recognition feature is turned on automatically. The users who do not want to use this service should go in and opt out of it automatically.
Facebook was criticized earlier last year following the company unveiling tools which would permit the sharing of the user information with other online sites. This move caused an uproar among the users and impelled a number of U.S senators to send a letter calling on Facebook to revise its privacy policy.