Microsoft’s Huge Facial Recognition Database Quietly Removed

To properly manage facial recognition technology has been one of Microsoft’s great concern. Last year, in an attempt to tackle this problem, Microsoft president Brad Smith, publicly spoke in front of the Congress. The company decided not to sell the tech to the police forces of California. Now, MS Celeb database holding millions of images of around 100,000 people, has been deleted quietly.

First announced in 2016, Microsoft Celeb has been promised to be a helpful tool in training systems of tech companies as well as military researchers since it had the biggest database on facial recognition. Even though the company did not ask for permission to use those photos in their database, under the license of Creative Commons, they were taken from the internet as the people in the photos were celebrities.

Nevertheless, according to the finding of Adam Harvey, a researcher in Berlin, the data set also included photos of security journalists or authors, who were considered by Financial Times as "arguably private individuals". The researcher, who works on the Megapixels project, commented to FT.com that publishing these sorts of information on the web would be a one-way street as they could never fully and completely be deleted.

Shortly after a thorough investigation done by Financial Times on Microsoft’s advanced technology to recognize faces as well as the main role of the company, the site was decided to be put through an erasing process. Yet, the company has spoken about the situation and addressed it as a simple protocol matter.

This might be the reason for the fact that Microsoft has not been speaking about the matter publicly as this was considered as a private procedure. But no matter what, this gesture of Microsoft has proved the company’s willingness to commit to legal matters as much as it wants the whole society to be.