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Putting the face in Facebook

Depending on your viewpoint, Facebook is set to get either creepier or more effective because the social media giant has announced the introduction of photo recognition to its popular Messenger app.

Facebook has long offered the ability to tag friends in photos, and “Photo magic”, the rather benign sounding name of the new software tool, scans users’ photos for their Facebook friends. Messenger then asks if a user wants to send the photo to other people in the image. 

Apparently the tool has been designed to make sending photos between friends easier and according to a Facebook spokeswoman quoted by the Wall Street Journal, the move is in response to a long standing user problem.

“People send more than 9.5 billion photos through Messenger every month, but sending photos of friends, and particularly groups of friends, is still too complicated.”

The WSJ reports that Photo Magic is currently being tested in Australia. With the addition of its recently announced AI platform/personal assistant M, soon the robots won’t need us to do our own status updates. 

Reassuringly, the social network does allow users to opt out should they object. And for all those who do, there is always the option of going offline. But, as Rafi from The League demonstrates in this video, posting to someone’s offline wall can be a little bit tricky.

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