By Dharini Priscilla 

At end of last year, Facebook announced that it is releasing a new facial recognition feature. This kind of technology is not new to Facebook, as the company already uses facial recognition to make suggestions when tagging friends in photos.

However, the recent expansion in this area has equally impressed and scared the users of this popular social media platform. This latest feature called Photo Review alerts the user when a photo of you has been uploaded, even if you weren’t tagged.

Facebook describes its facial recognition as follows – “Our technology analyzes the pixels in photos you’re already tagged in and generates a string of numbers we call a template. When photos and videos are uploaded to our systems, we compare those images to the template.”

The new feature is meant to act as a control measure for one’s social media identity as users can now pinpoint exactly where and how they show up.

“We want people to feel confident when they post pictures of themselves on Facebook. So, we’ll soon begin using face recognition technology to let people know when someone else uploads a photo of them as their profile picture,” Facebook said during an announcement in December.

Unfortunately, even advanced AI technology comes with certain limitations. In the case of Photo Review, you’ll only be notified of an untagged photo of yourself if you’re in the intended “audience” of that photo. “We always respect the privacy setting people select when posting a photo on Facebook (whether that’s friends, public, or a custom audience), so you won’t receive a notification if you’re not in the audience,” says Facebook.

Even though, you don’t necessarily have to be friends with the photo’s uploader to see the image; you need to have some friends in common. The photo’s audience also needs to be set to “everyone,” This means that the uploader didn’t restrict access to friends only or another selected group of people.

The only images that don’t follow these rules are profile photos: those are considered public images, so you’ll be notified if someone uses an image of you as their profile photo. This should help you identify fake accounts, like those of strangers trying to pose as you or steal your social media identity.

If you’re in someone’s profile photo which is always public, you’ll always be notified. For other photos, you’ll only get notified if you’re in the audience for that photo so as to protect the uploader’s privacy and not alert you about photos you’re not allowed to see. A Photo Review section of the profile will keep track of all your untagged but recognized photos.

An example of how Facebook alerts you of this type of tagging is displayed below.

Although this seems to be a solid improvement in terms of user security, there are those who find this setting to be quite upsetting. The idea of Facebook scanning every photo and using facial recognition can disturb those who deeply value their privacy on social media.

Thankfully, Facebook is giving us the option to opt out of the feature altogether. It has included a dedicated button to each account. This will be used to indicate whether or not you want Facebook to use facial recognition on your account. It’s a simple Yes or No option.

The problem is, not everyone has this option quite yet. The good news is that if you don’t, Facebook will use your current account setting for tag suggestions.

You can activate or deactivate the facial recognition feature of Facebook by following the instructions given below