Facebook Could Soon Warn Parents If They Share Pictures Of Their Children With Public

Technology SecurityFacebook’s Vice President of Engineering Jay Parikh introduced a “10-year arc of innovation” this week at an event of London detailing all of the site’s future features, including a groundbreaking use of artificial intelligence to help keep children safe.

Parikh said that over 2 billion photos are added to Facebook every day, and by using “deep learning” technology, the site could analyze the content of those pictures. That would allow Facebook to remove “objectionable content” automatically, and could also help warn people about the audience for their pictures before they posted them. In an example Parikh used to illustrate the technology, parents could receive a warning before publicly sharing pictures of their children.

“If I were to upload a photo of my kids playing at the park and I accidentally had it shared with the public, this system could say: ‘Hey wait a minute, this is a photo of your kids, normally you post this to just your family members, are you sure you want to do this?’” he said. “I think (it’s) a nice intelligent way for us to help you manage all of the data and the information around you, and that could be just helping you process this stuff and getting it right the first time.”

There’s no telling how far this technology is from becoming a reality, but any new tools to protect user privacy on the site would be welcome.