Meta tests facial recognition to fight celebrity scams

The days of Tom Hanks having to issue Instagram warnings about fake AI videos of himself may hopefully be coming to an end.

Facebook and Instagram owner Meta is now working on facial recognition techniques to try and curb the rise in "celeb-bait scams", as well as help users recover their accounts quicker.

"We’re testing a new way of detecting celeb-bait scams," wrote Meta in a blog published on Monday. "If our systems suspect that an ad may be a scam that contains the image of a public figure at risk for celeb-bait, we 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."

The post went on to say that Meta has had success in early testing phases with a small group of celebrities. "In the coming weeks, we’ll 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. Public figures enrolled in this protection can opt-out in their Accounts Center anytime."

As well as combatting scams, Meta confirmed it's also testing out video selfies as a means of aiding access recovery for anyone with a compromised account, not just famous people. "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," wrote Meta. "This is similar to identity verification tools you might already use to unlock your phone or access other apps."

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The company confirmed that facial recognition data is immediately deleted after the comparison is made.