Meta, the patent company of Facebook and Instagram is set to introduce facial recognition technology to try and crack down on scammers who use celebrities in fraudulent adverts.
Notable figures such as Elon Musk and personal finance expert, Martin Lewis, are among those who have fallen victim to such scams, which usually promote investment schemes and crypto-currencies.
During an interview mon BBC Radio 4, Mr. Lewis confessed that he still receives “countless” reports of his name and face being used in such scams every day, and had been left feeling “sick” by them.
Meta already uses an ad review system which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to spot fake celebrity endorsements but it now wants to beef it up with facial recognition tech.
This technology is expected to work by juxtaposing images from ads flagged as being dubious with celebrities’ Facebook or Instagram profile photos.
If the image is a confirmed match, and the ad checked to a scam, it will be automatically deleted.
At the tome of filing this report, Meta has said that “early testing” of the system had shown “promising results” so it would soon begin showing in-app notifications to a larger group of public figures who had been affected by the so-called “celeb-bait.”
