Facebook parent company Meta has announced it will discontinue the facial recognition system used on its flagship social media platform.

The company announced that the system will be shut down over the coming weeks. This will see several features removed from Facebook.

The company uses facial recognition to automatically detect people featured in photos and videos on the platform. Anyone currently opted into the system, which accounts for around a third of Facebook’s daily active users, will no longer be recognised.

Without the automatic facial recognition system, the move will also shut down the feature that automatically notifies users when they appear in photos or videos posted by others.

By removing the system, Facebook’s Automatic Alt Text (AAT) feature, which creates image descriptions for blind and visually impaired people, will no longer include the names of people recognised in photos.

In addition, the company will delete faceprints on over a billion users.

“Looking ahead, we still see facial recognition technology as a powerful tool, for example, for people needing to verify their identity, or to prevent fraud and impersonation,” said Facebook VP of Artificial Intelligence Jerome Pesenti.

“We believe facial recognition can help for products like these with privacy, transparency and control in place, so you decide if and how your face is used. We will continue working on these technologies and engaging outside experts.”

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The decision comes as part of a company-wide move to limit the use of facial recognition in its products.

“There are many concerns about the place of facial recognition technology in society, and regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use,” Pesenti added.

“Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate.”

The move comes amid growing concerns about the use of facial recognition. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) recently warned that, despite some advantages, it puts people’s privacy at risk.

When Police Scotland attempted to roll-out live facial recognition, a Holyrood report said the technology cannot be used until certain safeguards have been introduced. These include ensuring compliance with human rights and data protection legislation and the removal of ethnic minority biases.

Concerns about privacy caused a proposed rollout of a facial recognition system at several North Ayrshire schools to be suspended. The system would have allowed school children to pay for their lunches using a facial recognition.

However, the system was put on hold after the ICO decided to investigate.