IBM says it is leaving the face recognition market for fear that the technology will be used to discriminate.
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IBM announced on Monday that it is withdrawing from the general face recognition market and fears that the technology will be used to promote discrimination and racial injustice.
“IBM strongly opposes and will not tolerate the use of technologies, including third party facial recognition technologies, for mass surveillance, racial profiling, violating fundamental human rights and freedoms, or for purposes that do not conform to our values and principles “CEO Arvind Krishna said in a letter to the congressional leaders on Monday.
“We believe it is now time to start a national dialogue on whether and how facial recognition technologies should be used by domestic law enforcement agencies,” the company said.
Facial recognition has been criticized by privacy advocates and legislators, and a handful of cities have banned municipal use of the technology. Last year, the democratic legislature proposed that public housing be banned from using technologies like facial recognition. However, face recognition is on the way to becoming ubiquitous in airports and shopping centers, and some companies are selling it to police authorities.
Critics cite studies showing that the technology has low levels of accuracy for women and minorities. If it works properly, it could become an inevitable and invasive form of surveillance. Companies like Clearview AI, whose technology enables users to identify people by comparing their faces to photos taken on the Internet, have raised concerns about the technology’s performance.
IBM has been a strong supporter of face recognition regulation, saying that potentially harmful applications could be restricted while innovation remains possible. IBM caused controversy in March when Flickr photos released under a Creative Commons license were used as part of a collection to train AI face recognition systems.
IBM has not made any additional comment.
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