Facebook Created A Facial Recognition App For Internal Use

Facebook may have changed its view on facial recognition but it has no intention to abandon the technology. According to Business Insider, between the years 2015 and 2016, the company developed a mobile app packed with this tech to identify its own employees and their friends. However, this app is for internal use only.

With this app, all you have to do is to point the phone’s camera to a person and then you will have the profile picture and the name of him or her. This tech is handy in large corporations where there are a large number of people.

Business Insider said that with enough data to work on, the app can identify almost anyone on Facebook. However, as stated by a company’s spokesperson, only people who have enabled the facial recognition feature will be recognized by the app. The spokesperson also said that the app was merely a tool for Facebook’s employees to learn more about this new emerging technology.

The app has been discontinued and it is highly likely that you will not hear about it or anything like it again. Facebook’s recent move to encourage privacy to save its own reputation has driven the company away from the facial recognition tech.

This move is not only for the benefit of its users but also because it is now a subject of a class-action lawsuit, which accuses the company of collecting facial data without asking for permission first. This is a violation of the Biometric Information Privacy Act of Illinois.

With pressure from the public, Facebook may not want to continue any projects involving facial recognition technology. However, forfeiting the tech might not be a good option, so for now, its use is temporarily limited.