“In the coming weeks, Meta will shut down the Face Recognition system on Facebook as part of a company-wide move to limit the use of facial recognition in our products,” wrote Meta VP of Artificial Intelligence Jerome Pesenti in a blog post this week. Meta, the new name for Mark Zuckerberg’s company as of late October, will phase out the facial rec tech used on the social media platform over the next few weeks and will delete over a billion users’ facial rec templates. Pesenti cites “growing societal concerns” and the lack of AI regulation as reasons for the company’s sudden turnaround on facial recognition. “This move is probably not related to protecting users’ privacy,” commented Avast’s Luis Corrons. “It most likely just doesn’t fit in with their business plans anymore. Maybe the fact that we won’t be using our real faces in the metaverse they are designing has had an influence too.”
