Facebook Unveils Facial-Recognition Technology For Photos
PALO ALTO (KCBS / AP) -- Facebook will try to make it easier to identify friends in photos uploaded to the social networking site by using facial recognition software to suggest people that users may want to tag.
In a blog post Wednesday, Facebook engineer Justin Mitchell said the new tag-suggestions feature will match new photos to others that people have already been tagged in. Similar photos will be grouped and the software will let users know who it thinks is in the shots.
Palo Alto-based Facebook already offers a way to tag one person in a group of photos, and it hopes this will add more simplicity to the process.
KCBS Technology Analyst Larry Magid:
KCBS Technology Analyst Larry Magid said that the new technology is not for everyone and those who don't want to participate will still have an opt-out option for the new feature.
The new feature is expected to start rolling out to about 5 percent of Facebook U.S. users next week.
Mitchell said over 100 million tags are linked to photos on Facebook daily.
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