Facebook has had an internal app for smartphones with face recognition in 2015 and 2016. This allowed company staff to recognize colleagues and their friends, according to reports from Business Insider.
According to anonymous sources of the American news site, Facebook employees could hold their smartphone in front of someone’s face, after which the app would recognize the name and profile picture.
The app has never been made public and is no longer being developed. In a statement to CNET, Facebook acknowledges that the app was able to recognize employees and their friends, but only if they had turned on face recognition.
“Our teams regularly build apps for internal use to learn about new technologies,” Facebook tells the news site.
It is not clear why exactly the development of the app was stopped.
About the author: Rick Culpepper
Rick Culpepper is of those journalists who dig the topic to the very bottom. He is often late with the delivery of the piece, but always does it perfectly. In his spare time, he collects data for one of the most high-profile investigations of corruption in the EU.
