Facebook Built a Facial Recognition App To Identify Employees

Facebook is again under fire for its controversial facial recognition technology. The tool used facial recognition in real-time to identify people just by pointing a smartphone camera at them.  

Business Insider was the first one to break out the story and according to them, the app was in use between 2015 and 2016. It has since been discontinued. According to anonymous sources, the tool was able to pull up the Facebook profile of a person using facial recognition capabilities. The tool was allegedly tested on the employees of Facebook and their friends who had facial recognition activated on their profiles.  

Facebook built a facial recognition app that let employees identify people by pointing a phone at them https://t.co/dp0DDqKlzA

— Business Insider (@businessinsider) November 22, 2019

Source: (Twitter)

Facebook confirmed the existence of the app but denied it could identify people on the social material. Facebook published a statement to CNET saying, 

“As a way to learn about new technologies, our teams regularly build apps to use internally. The app described here were only available to Facebook employees, and could only recognize employees and their friends who had face recognition enabled.”

The app was developed before the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Facebook has been the subject of multiple scandals over the last few years, and for this reason, the Delete Facebook movement continues to gain pace. Back in October, it was reported that Facebook was working on AI that could circumvent facial recognition and help fight deepfakes.