Facebook uses AI to tackle catfish and identity thieves

For all those people who wake up paranoid about the embarrassing photos from the Christmas party, Facebook has come to your rescue.

The new feature, once activated of course, will tell you when your face is appearing in a picture which you are not tagged in. This could be an innocent oversight, someone who papped you from an embarrassing angle, or it could be more nefarious.

“Powered by the same technology we’ve used to suggest friends you may want to tag in photos or videos, these new features help you find photos that you’re not tagged in and help you detect when others might be attempting to use your image as their profile picture,” said Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, Director of Applied Machine Learning at Facebook.

Although progress for internet based technologies have always been viewed in a positive light, you cannot ignore there will be those who will have more dastardly intentions. Social media is becoming a much more prominent aspect of our lives, whether it’s identity authentication or when applying for new jobs, your Facebook profile could have a say.

Right now the technology is just being used as people put photos into the public domain. You won’t, for instance, receive a notification when someone shares an image to a private network, group or message, that would be deemed as violating that individuals privacy rights. It won’t be too long however, before you’ll receive a notification should anyone use your image as a profile picture, irrelevant of the other users privacy settings. The objective after all is preventing impersonation.

You will have to give permission for Facebook’s software to start searching for you though. You control whether Facebook can recognize you in photos and videos, and a simple on/off button will appear on your profile. For those who don’t mind their face being used in a catfish scam, Facebook wouldn’t want to force protection of their identity on them. Or perhaps this choice has been left open for those who really want to forget the night before.