Over the years, Facebook has been growing and improving its facial recognition technology in the hope that it adds more context and relevance to their data systems.
Recently, Facebook has revealed what they’ve been up to in terms of this new-found technology, a new feature where their users will now receive notifications as soon as a photo of themselves has been uploaded, whether their tagged in it or not, to make it much easier for them to see the photos they’re in without them getting lost on someone else’s profile.
So how will Facebook facial recognition work?
Whenever someone posts a new image, Facebook will now recognise your face and you’ll receive a notification giving you the option to tag yourself in it if you wish to do so. If for some reason it isn’t you, you can then let Facebook know as well as still having the option to report it, if you find the image to be inappropriate or offensive.
However, you won’t get a notification for every image that is uploaded, even if your face is identified.
But why?
If someone who you’re not friends with decides to post a group photo you happen to be in, your face will still be identified but you won’t receive a notification because you’re not friends with that specific user. Makes sense, right? It would be a little scary if people you’re not even friends with started tagging you in their photos.
What if someone uses a photo of you as their profile picture?
This has been a problem for a number of years. Facebook will probably be looking to roll out an update in the future that alerts users if someone uses their photo on their profile. This is one step in the right direction to reducing identity fraud. There’s also a possibility this could be used for copyright identification too.
Given Facebook has been trying out facial recognition for years, this feature may not feel like a massive leap for the platform, but it is an advancement for sure.
The thought of face identification may scare a lot of people. Add this to Facebook being able to track where you are, who you talk to and what you do, based on images alone, could eventually push a lot of people away from the platform.
How could Facebook facial recognition help your business?
There’s also massive value in obtaining information from images, facial or not. If Facebook can tell Coke how many users are photographed with their product, just think what advertisers could do with that information when targeting ads!
Facebook knows that they need to tread very carefully with this, which is why they’ve also posted a new ‘Hard Questions’ post on how their new face identification technology works to assure users, that their data is completely private and secure.
There’s always a possibility that Facebook’s been doing this for years without us even knowing about it. They may have even used our information, in some way, to further improve the image identification system that was probably already in place before they even announced it. It’ll be interesting in the coming months to see if they use this new technology to improve their data tracking even further, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Could facial recognition technology become just a normal part of what we see in life?
We here at The Marketing Optimist think it will in the years to come, facial recognition will become such the norm that we won’t even think twice about it, which could then open the gates for Facebook to make use of our data even more.
And again, Facebook is probably already doing this. After all, they can already identify a variety of different items in images that are posted onto their platform, so what’s stopping them from taking it that one step further?
