In what appears to be an uprising against the growing threat posed by fraudsters who employ “celeb-bait” approaches to their advertisements, Meta, Facebook’s parent company has announced the reactivation of its facial recognition technology. This effort targets the growing trend of misuse of celebrity images by fraudsters. This feature was last active in the year 2021 when the company rolled it back due to increased scrutiny over ownership of personal privacy data.
Meta's new facial recognition trial for public figures, which is scheduled to commence in December, will include around 50,000 people. Whenever an image depicting a celebrity is featured in fraudulent advertisements distributed on Facebook, the system utilizes their profile pictures to contrast the two images. Should a match be discovered and Meta recognize the ad as fraudulent, the advertising will not be visible to the intended audience. If a celebrity image is used in the program, the celebrity will be informed about it and may withdraw their image from the program.
Despite the plans to expand the system around the world, some countries like Britain, European countries as a whole, South Korea, and in certain US regions such as Texas and Illinois will not be able to take part in this due to legal reasons. These regions have strict biometrics protective laws which Meta does not have authorization to meet yet.
Monika Bickert, Meta’s Vice President of Content Policy, stated that the goal of such an initiative is to defend public personalities whose faces are put on scam advertising. "The idea here is: roll out as much protection as we can for them. They can opt out of it if they want to, but we want to be able to make this protection available to them and easy for them," Bickert said during a press briefing.
This trial shows how Meta is trying to strike a balance between deploying such powerful technology that can be seen as intrusive and meeting robust regulations regarding data privacy. When Meta deactivated its facial recognition technology-based system for the first time, it also wiped the face scan data of a billion users, explaining its actions on growing societal concerns.
This time, however, the company is under immense pressure to do more to counter celeb-bait scams that manipulate images of famous people with the help of AI-generated images for fake investment sites.
To mitigate privacy concerns, Meta assured that any facial recognition data developed during the trial would be destroyed immediately after it is of use no matter the case of a detected forgery. Prior to the tests, the tool went through an internal assessment of its privacy implications and discussions with regulators, policymakers, and privacy advocates.
Apart from protecting the interests of public figures, Meta has also commenced looking into the possibilities of the technology not only for celebrities but also the ordinary users of Facebook and Instagram. It could, for example, assist users in recovering hacked or forgotten accounts. This suggests that some of the practices within this trial may be restricted, but in time, a generalized use of facial recognition is likely to evolve across other platforms owned by Meta.
As such, Meta’s reinstatement of the facial recognition tool is prompted by the desire to face both legal obligations and the sheer number of related lawsuits. The last few months saw Meta settle a $1.4 billion suit filed against it in Texas for the illegal collection of biometric data.
This particular trial stakes new ground as it sees Meta respond to evolving privacy standards while attempting to maintain its aggressive pace of technological advancement.