Facial recognition technology is being tested as a way to detect and prevent “celeb-bait” ads on Meta platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
“Celeb-bait” ads are when scammers use images of public figures, such as content creators or celebrities, to entice people into engaging with ads that lead to scam websites, where they are asked to share personal information or send money.
Under the new technology being tested, if Meta’s systems suspect that an ad may be a scam that contains the image of a public figure at risk for celeb-bait, they will try to use facial recognition technology to compare faces in the ad to the public figure’s Facebook and Instagram profile pictures.
“If we confirm a match and determine the ad is a scam, we’ll block it. We immediately delete any facial data generated from ads for this one-time comparison, regardless of whether our system finds a match, and we don’t use it for any other purpose,” Meta says.
“Early testing with a small group of celebrities and public figures shows promising results in increasing the speed and efficacy with which we can detect and enforce against this type of scam.”
Meta says in the coming weeks, it will “start showing in-app notifications to a larger group of public figures who’ve been impacted by celeb-bait letting them know we’re enrolling them in this protection”.
The tech giant says public figures enrolled in the protection can opt out in their Accounts Center anytime.
Meta said it will enrol about 50,000 public figures in the trial.
“The idea here is: roll out as much protection as we can for them. They can opt out of it if they want to, but we want to be able to make this protection available to them and easy for them,” Meta’s vice president of content policy Monika Bickert said in a briefing with journalists.
Meta is also testing facial recognition technology as a means for people to verify their identity and regain access to compromised accounts.
“We’re now testing video selfies as a means for people to verify their identity and regain access to compromised accounts,” Meta says.
“The user will upload a video selfie and we’ll use facial recognition technology to compare the selfie to the profile pictures on the account they’re trying to access.
“This is similar to identity verification tools you might already use to unlock your phone or access other apps.”
