Facebook owner Meta has decided to restart its facial recognition software three years after shutting it down.
According to Reuters, Meta on Tuesday, October 22, 2024, announced that it is restarting its facial recognition for Facebook as part of the efforts against the “celeb-bait” scam.
Mark Zuckerberg’s company said that in the initial trials it will enroll 50,000 public figures into Facebook accounts which will automatically compare their profile photos with the images used in the scam advertisement. After comparison of the image, if Meta finds that the ads are a scam, it will block them.
As per Meta, celebrities will be informed in advance about their enrollment, and they can also opt out if they do not want to participate in the trails.
Monika Bickert, Meta’s vice president of content policy, in a briefing to the press said that the firm has selected public figures who it believes have higher chances of being used in scam ads.
She told the reporters, “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.”
Meta will begin trials globally in December 2024 excluding the countries where it does not have regulatory permission, including, Britain, the European Union, South Korea and the U.S. states of Texas and Illinois.
