With every new device, facial recognition technology is becoming more and more advanced. This fast technology advancement gets easier for deployment and usage but comes at a privacy cost.
Microsoft’s President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith would like to see some changes regarding facial technology regulations. Smith noted some of the pros and cons associated with facial recognition technology in a blog post. He also said that Microsoft and every other technology company should have an ethical responsibility towards user privacy.
He wanted to point out several positive examples of using facial recognition technology that includes locating a missing child, helping the police for identification purposes or even using a smartphone and an app that could help a blind person telling him who just walked into a meeting room.
Unfortunately, there is also a negative side of this technology like the possibility for Governments to track our every step, a database of persons who attended a political rally or stores sharing information on our interests, for instance, recording which shelf we looked at without our consent.
Therefore Microsoft calls governments to create a common regulatory framework for using a facial recognition technology. Without the regulatory, it is very much likely that many companies would avoid their own ethics rules, especially in a competitive environment.
Microsoft strongly believes that a common regulation is necessary for creating a healthier industry and forcing all companies to follow the same rules.