Meta Platforms Inc. today said it’s in the process of testing new facial recognition technology to help reduce the number of “celebrity bait” ads that appear on the company’s social media platforms.
The company explained that when an ad is suspected of being a scam, it will be flagged by technology already in use. Since both Facebook and Instagram are absolutely riddled with such ads, the flagging system is very slow — as any user might have noticed. To speed up the process, human reviewers are being removed from the equation, and Meta’s automated facial recognition system will kick in.
“If our systems suspect that an ad may be a scam that contains the image of a public figure at risk for celeb-bait, we will try to use facial recognition technology to compare faces in the ad to the public figure’s Facebook and Instagram profile pictures,” Meta said in a blog post. “If we confirm a match and determine the ad is a scam, we’ll block it.”
The system has already been tested with what Meta said was a small group of celebrities and public figures, showing “promising results.” In the coming weeks, the tests will feature more and more people, each receiving in-app notifications to let them know they’ve been used in a scam. They can opt out of the system if they choose.
No doubt users of Facebook and Instagram will be happy to hear that Meta will also use its new detection systems to help people whose accounts have been hijacked by scammers. When they believe that’s the case, they’ll now be able to upload a video selfie that can be tested with the same facial recognition technology.
Given the concern over facial recognition, Meta shut down its tagging systems in 2021. At the time, other major players in the tech industry scaled back their facial recognition tech efforts due to public concern over privacy. To alleviate such concerns, Meta said all the data used for its new detection systems will be encrypted and deleted as soon as it has been used for a comparison.
Notably, the new systems will not be available in the U.K. or the EU where data protection laws have become robust over the last few years.