Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, said it will introduce facial recognition technology in a bid to tackle scam artists using fake versions of celebrities in advertisements. Celebrity victims of this style of scam include Elon Musk and personal finance guru Martin Lewis. It usually promotes investment schemes and crypto-currencies.

Mr Lewis had previously stated to the BBC Radio 4 programme Today that he received "countless" reports daily that his name and face were being used to scam people and was left feeling "sick" by them.

Meta already uses an ad review system which relies on artificial intelligence to detect fake celebrity endorsements but is now looking to add further power using facial recognition technology.

It will look for matches between fraudulent, dubious images of advertisements and celebrities' profile pictures or photos on Facebook or Instagram.

The image will be instantly removed in case it matches a scam ad.

Meta said "early testing" of the system had demonstrated "positive outcomes," so it would now begin showing in-app notifications to a larger number of public figures who'd been affected by so-called "celeb-bait."

Deepfakes
The issue of celebrity scams has been a long-running one for Meta.

It became so important in the 2010s that Mr Lewis took Facebook to court, only to drop the case when the firm agreed to introduce a button enabling people to report scam ads.
In addition to introducing the button, Facebook agreed to donate £3m to Citizens Advice.
However, since then, the scams have got much more sophisticated and infinitely more believable.

Powered by so-called deepfake technology, they increasingly use realistic computer-generated likeness or video to make it appear that a celebrity is endorsing a product or service.
Under such pressure, Meta took to doing something about the threat of deepfake ads.

On Sunday, Mr Lewis urged the government to give the UK regulator, Ofcom, more powers to tackle scam ads after a fake interview with Chancellor Rachel Reeves was used to trick people into giving away their bank details.

"Scammers are relentless and continuously evolve their tactics to try to evade detection," Meta acknowledged.

"We hope that by sharing our approach, we can help inform our industry's defences against online scammers," it added.

Social media
Meta has also said it will use facial recognition technology to help people who find themselves locked out of their social media.
Currently, unlocking Instagram or Facebook accounts involves uploading official ID or documents.

But now video selfies and face recognition are now experimented on for purposes of identifying who a person is and regaining access to it more quickly.

The material provided by the user will be compared to that in the account's profile picture to determine whether the two match or not.

However, its mass use is controversial. Facebook previously used it before halting the feature in 2021 amid concerns over privacy, accuracy, and bias.
Facial data resulting from the comparison procedure will be deleted after check, and the video selfies will be encrypted and stored securely, it said; they are not meant to be shown to the public.

But it won't be available at first where it doesn't have the regulators' approvals yet, such as in the UK and EU.