Facebook announce video auto-tagging feature

If you’re not a fan of getting tagged on Facebook, things are going to get a whole lot worse if Facebook’s latest tinkering comes to pass.

At the recent F8 developer conference, head of applied machine learning at Facebook – Joaquin Quiñonero Candela – announced that Facebook will soon be automatically tagging you in video that is uploaded to the social networking website.

Facebook already employs powerful facial recognition software that allows [some] Facebook users to receive “tag suggestions” in images they upload, which basically means Facebook have detected a likeness to a certain Facebook friend in an image and is suggesting (i.e. imploring) to the uploader to tag that person in the photo.

And now that tool is moving to video. Facebook claims that their technology will not only allow their service to detect when certain Facebook users appear in a video, but also exactly when they appear in the video (i.e. what frame.)

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This would allow Facebook to create easily searchable tags where you can search for videos in which specific Facebook users appear, and skip straight to the part of the video where they first appear.

It certainly creates a much more social sharing experience, but as is often the case, this appears to be happening at the expense of our privacy. Do we really want Facebook detecting us and tagging us in video, all by itself?

With photo “tag suggestions”, a user can opt out via or privacy settings to stop their name appearing as a suggestion, though it is doubtful that doing so prevents Facebook’s facial recognition software from “learning” about their face. At the moment, it is unknown what sort of privacy settings will apply to this video tagging feature and whether users have to explicitly opt-out of this video tagging feature, if they can indeed opt-out at all.

Facebook also announced its service would also be able to detect objects in videos using AI technology. In a demonstration at the F8 conference, it was able to detect a cat, fireworks and videos about food, all automatically without any human input.

When this feature will be released to the general public is currently unknown.

How do you feel about Facebook being able to detect you in video? If Facebook allows, would you opt-out of an auto-tag video feature? Let us know.