Meta decided to shut down this facial recognition feature, but now they are testing it to reintroduce the service again to minimize the “celeb bait” ad scams in general and those that might be generated with generative AI technology.
The Meta Vice President of Content Policy, Monica Bickert, stated in a post that these tests are focused on strengthening the already existing anti-scam measures like the automated scans from the ad review system. This system aims to reduce significantly the scammers that are looking to fool the Facebook Meta and Instagram users into clicking on false advertisements.
In their statement, Meta stated that they will register for now about 50,000 public figures in a trial version. This involves an algorithm that is supposed to compare their Facebook profile photos with images that are used in different suspicious scam ads. In the situation when the images are revealed to match and Meta is indeed believing that the ads are some sort of scam, it will automatically block them.
Meta ensures that every celebrity will receive a notification about this new enrollment and they are free to opt-out from it if they don’t want to participate.
Also, the giant social media states that this facial recognition will not be used for any other purposes, and just for fighting the scam ads.
“We immediately delete any facial data generated from ads for this one-time comparison regardless of whether our system finds a match, and we don’t use it for any other purpose,”, Monica Bickert said in the blog post.
This Meta AI new feature is believed to be very effective in recognizing deepfake scam ads, where generative AI is used to generate different images with celebrities.
In addition to this Meta new AI feature, they are planning to test it for video selfies to unlock the Facebook Meta and Instagram accounts that have been blocked. In many cases, users are facing various scam methods which result in account blocking.
So, with the Meta AI facial recognition, the giant social media claims to provide a faster and easier method for users to regain their Facebook or Instagram accounts without the need to upload a governmental ID.
“While we know hackers will keep trying to exploit account recovery tools, this verification method will ultimately be harder for hackers to abuse than traditional document-based identity verification.”, the Vice President of Content Policy said.
It should be mentioned that for now, these tests for the Meta AI new feature will not apply in the U.K. and the European Union due to several data protection regulations.
“We are engaging with the U.K. regulator, policymakers, and other experts while testing moves forward,”, a spokesperson from Meta stated for TechCrunch.
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