Now you can manage your identity better on Facebook, thanks to its newly brought tools for incorporating Face Recognition technology. These tools will help you find photos on which you are not tagged and even detect if any other user is attempting to use your photo as their profile picture. The social media leader has further brought a new way for visually impaired people to recognize who is or are in the photos they come across.
The collective newness is brought by Facebook based on feedback received from users who were looking for more convenience in managing face recognition. The new tools are paired with one on/off control. If you have your tag suggestion set to ‘none’, then you will have default face recognition set to ‘off’ until you change otherwise.
One of the new features lets you know every time you are in a photo and ‘part of the audience for that post.’ This will work even if you are not tagged. Given that you are uncomfortable with the post, you can reach out to the poster as soon as you want. As per Facebook’s Privacy Policy, you will not be notified if you are not among the audience.
As for users with visual impairments, Facebook is effectively using its approach to reaching people irrespective of abilities. Now it is possible for these users to know who is in photos even if not tagged. This requires the screen reader that will work with face recognition to convey the info to the respective users.
In the blog post that contains the announcement of the new tools, Facebook also explained how the face recognition technology is being put to work. Initiated in 2010, the technology analyzes the pixels of photos you are tagged in. Detecting the patterns, it generates a string of numbers called a template. When photos and videos get uploaded on the platform, the technology compares the images with the template.
It is up to the users if they want Facebook to recognize them in photos and videos. Soon there will be the on/off switch rather than settings for individual features using the face recognition tech.
Facebook is rolling out the new features in all places except Canada and the EU, where the face recognition tech is not provided.
