subject: New Facial Recognition Software to Photo Tagging-Facebook [print this page] New Facial Recognition Software to Photo Tagging-Facebook
In a blog post Wednesday afternoon, Facebook engineer Justin Mitchell announced a product update to be introduced over the next few weeks, centered on photos uploaded to the site.
The update, tag suggestions', is fairly straightforward; when a user uploads a new photo to their account, Facebook will begin to use facial recognition software to match faces in past photos the user has already uploaded and tagged. To tag' someone, of course, is to identify a person in the photo by matching them to their Facebook profile. "We group similar photos together," Mitchell wrote, "and, whenever possible, suggest the name of the friend in the photos."
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With this blog post, methinks the privacy concerns will start to spike. Facebook anticipates as much, however, and tries to defuse worries with the opt-out' disclaimer, directing users that don't want their names to be suggested in photo tags to their privacy settings page. Facebook isn't sharing many details about the software itself. When asked, a Facebook spokesperson told me that some of the technology was built in house, while some was licensed from outside of Facebook. "It's pretty standard technology that is already out there," the spokesperson told me. "Picasa and iPhoto are just a couple others that use facial recognition software." Using any sort of auto-recognition software is obviously a touchy subject for the company. The downplayed tone of the spokesperson's response reminds me how careful the company has to be around the topic. I've been told there's no specific time frame for the full roll-out as of today, though next week Facebook will launch the update with 5% of its United States user base.
