Back in June this year, Facebook introduced Profile Picture Guard to prevent misuse of profile pictures. Now, this Menlo Park based social media giant has announced new tools that would help users better manage their identity using facial recognition.
Using face recognition, Facebook will now help users find the photos they are not tagged in. Now whenever someone uploads a photo on Facebook, users will receive a notification about the upload. They can then decide whether to tag themselves in that picture, remain untagged, or get in touch with person who uploaded the picture to take it down.
However, it’s worth noting that you will receive an alert if you are a part of the audience that’s allowed to see that photo. For example, if the privacy setting is set to custom audience, and you are not a part of it, then there’s no way for you to know about that photo upload.
Furthermore, Facebook will also let users know when someone else is using their photo as a profile picture. Facebook says they are “doing this to prevent people from impersonating others” on their platform.
The way this face recognition works is when you are tagged in a photo, Facebook analyses the pixels in that photo and generates a string of numbers which they call template. Facebook then compares this template with other images that are being uploaded to their system.
Having said that, users are always in control of whether they want Facebook to recognize them in photos and videos. The company will soon roll out a simple on/off switch instead of advanced options to let users decide whether they want to be recognized by Facebook.
Apart from all this, Facebook has also introduced new tools for people with visual impairments. These tools, that use face recognition, will let people using screen readers know who appears in photos in their News Feed. This works even when those people aren’t tagged in the photos.
“Today we’re announcing new, optional tools to help people better manage their identity on Facebook using face recognition. Powered by the same technology we’ve used to suggest friends you may want to tag in photos or videos, these new features help you find photos that you’re not tagged in and help you detect when others might be attempting to use your image as their profile picture. We’re also introducing a way for people who are visually impaired to know more about who is in the photos they encounter on Facebook.” said Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, Director, Applied Machine Learning, Facebook.
Facebook is introducing these new features in all regions, except in Canda and European Union.
What do you think of these news tools Facebook has introduced? Do share your thoughts with us in the comments down below.
