Meta, Mark Zuckerberg’s social media firm, is relaunching its facial recognition program on Facebook to combat the growing number of celebrity frauds, sometimes known as “celeb bait” scams, in which criminals utilize photographs of popular persons in phony adverts to trick users.
The software shut down three years ago is being reintroduced due to privacy concerns and governmental pressure.
According to the corporation, the software experiment will begin in December and automatically match the Facebook profile photos of about 50,000 public people to images used in suspected scam advertisements.
If Meta detects a match and identifies the ad as a scam, it will block it. Celebrities involved in the trial will be notified of their enrollment and can opt-out if they choose.
Meta said it plans to roll out the trial globally but will exclude some major regions such as Britain, the European Union, South Korea, and U.S. states like Texas and Illinois, where Meta lacks regulatory clearance to use facial recognition technology.
Meta’s Vice President of Content Policy, Monika Bickert, explained that the trial aims to protect public figures whose images have been frequently used in scam advertisements.
“The idea here is to roll out as much protection as we can for them. They can opt out if they want to, but we want to make this protection easy and available,” Bickert said during a briefing with journalists.
To address privacy concerns, Meta said that any facial data generated during the trial would be immediately deleted after being compared with images in suspected scam ads, regardless of whether a scam was detected.
- The company emphasized that the tool has undergone rigorous internal privacy and risk assessments, as well as consultations with regulators, policymakers, and privacy experts.
- In addition to the celeb bait scam initiative, Meta is also considering expanding the use of facial recognition technology for non-celebrities.
- The company plans to test using facial recognition data to help regular Facebook and Instagram users regain access to accounts that have been hacked or locked due to forgotten passwords.
