Facebook’s new facial recognition feature finds you in untagged photos

Today, Facebook announced that it will start using its facial recognition technology to find photos of you across its site, even if you aren’t tagged in those photos. The idea is to give you more control over your identity online by informing you when your face appears in a photo, even those you don’t know about. According to a Facebook blog post, the new feature is powered by the same AI technology used to suggest friends you may want to tag in your own uploaded images.

The feature, dubbed Photo Review, has one caveat: you’ll only be notified of an untagged photo of yourself if you’re in the intended “audience” of that photo. “We always respect the privacy setting people select when posting a photo on Facebook (whether that’s friends, public, or a custom audience), so you won’t receive a notification if you’re not in the audience,” the blog post says.

You don’t necessarily have to be friends with the photo’s poster to see the image; you only need to have some friends in common. The photo’s audience also needs to be set to “everyone,” which means the poster didn’t restrict access to friends only or another, select group of people.

The only images that don’t follow those rules are profile photos: those are considered public images, so you’ll be notified if someone uses an image of you as their profile photo. This should help you identify fake accounts, like those of strangers trying to pose as you or steal your social media identity.

Visually impaired Facebook users will have their own version of Photo Review: screen readers will soon be able to read off people who appear in photos. This builds on Facebook’s automatic alt-text tool that reads off a photo’s details, including who posted it and when, and describes what’s in the photo to those with vision limitations.

Facebook will soon roll out an easier way to opt out of facial recognition all together as well. The company will have an on-off switch to opt out of all facial recognition features, rather than customizable settings for individual features. Once the switch becomes available, you won’t have to wade through a bunch of facial recognition settings and decide which you feel comfortable with—instead, you can turn all facial recognition uses off with one click.

In addition to controlling your online image, Facebook’s Photo Review presents another way users could get lost down a rabbit hole on the social media website. While that might not be ideal for those who don’t want to use Facebook as frequently as they currently do, it’s good for Facebook, as it could boost engagement. Users could spend more time going through untagged images of themselves while also connecting with the friends of friends who post those images.

But that’s the kind of engagement that Facebook prefers and encourages. Recently, the company announced a plan to crack down on “engagement bait” posts, or those that beg for likes, comments, and shares in order to artificially inflate engagement totals. Facebook will demote those posts now, and pages that consistently resort to engagement bait posts will glean less reach and face stricter policies.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1234571