Facebook to Shut Down Facial Recognition System, Delete Data of 1 Billion Users

CEO Mark Zuckerberg gives the keynote address during the Facebook F8 Developer Conference in San Francisco, Calif., March 25, 2015. Britain's competition watchdog The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at the U.S. tech giants in a report Wednesday July 1, 2020, wanting new rules to foster competition in digital advertising markets and rein in the industry's dominant players, Google and Facebook. Eric Risberg/AP Photo

Facebook Inc. on Tuesday announced it is shutting down its facial recognition system that identifies users in videos and photos, while claiming it will delete “facial recognition templates” of more than 1 billion people.

“Regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use,” Jerome Pesenti, vice president of artificial intelligence at Facebook, wrote in a blog post. “Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate.”