Facebook has announced it will no longer use facial recognition technology to offer tag suggestions in photos unless users opt in to the service.
From this week, users who have the Face Recognition setting turned on will receive a notification every time someone uploads a photo of them, even if they aren't tagged.
They will then have the option to tag themselves, stay untagged, or report the photo if it’s something they want taken down.
If you don't already have the Face Recognition setting, Facebook says you will get a notice about it in your News Feed.
You will have the option to turn it on or leave it off right in the notice, as opposed to having to go to a separate screen.
If you ignore the notice, Face Recognition will remain off, meaning you'll have to go into your settings to activate it. New users will also have facial recognition left off by default.
The new Face Recognition tool replaces Tag Suggestions, which let you decide whether friends would see a suggestion to tag you in a photo when they uploaded it.
Face Recognition expands upon what Tag Suggestions offered, but it also states more explicitly that facial recognition is being performed on photos uploaded to Facebook.
"We've continued to engage with privacy experts, academics, regulators and people on Facebook about how we use face recognition and the options you have to control it," Srinivas Narayanan, Applied Research Lead for Facebook AI, said in a statement .
The move comes after Facebook lost a federal appeal last month, after courts found the company without user consent.
It must now face a class-action lawsuit over whether it violated user privacy with its facial recognition tools. The company could pay billions if it loses the case.
