Facebook uses AI to counter distress caused by profiles of the deceased

Facebook wants to harness AI to prevent distressing occurrences where a deceased loved one's profile is shown as if alive on the platform.

Many of us have been there, we've logged in to Facebook to find a notification alerting us to say “Happy birthday!” to a loved one who's no longer with us. Or, sometimes, they can appear as a suggestion to invite to an event.

These are distressing moments for people, and short of ‘unfriending’ or blocking the profile they can...

10 April 2019 | Facebook

Facebook pumps $7.5m into an independent AI ethics centre

An independent AI ethics research centre is set to receive $7.5 million of funding courtesy of the folks at Facebook.

The new research centre is called the Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence and was created in collaboration with the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

Facebook, like many companies, is fighting outside concerns about the development of AI and its potential societal impact. The centre should help to ensure Facebook keeps up with ethical best...

21 January 2019 | Ethics

Facebook is planning on doubling its AI unit by 2020

Facebook’s plans to double its artificial intelligence unit by 2020 indicates just how important the firm considers it to be. The so-called FAIR (Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research) division at the company has approximately 180-200 staff. Speaking to Forbes, Facebook Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun said he expects the division to double by 2020. Already, he admits, "I don't know everybody's name anymore and I don't recognise everybody either”. The innovative AI division at...

1 October 2018 | Facebook

Facebook can open closed eyes in photos using AI correction

An AI-powered solution by a pair of Facebook engineers may be able to fix those photos that have been ruined by someone blinking at the wrong moment. The company published a 10-page research paper (PDF) this week detailing how their system works and likened it to existing photo retouching tools such as red-eye correction. Facebook’s idea is not entirely original, a similar feature exists in Adobe Photoshop Elements. The engineers acknowledge this in their paper but believe their ExGAN...

20 June 2018 | Facebook

Facebook’s AI continues to fight the worst of the web

Facebook has published its content filtering numbers for the first time and it’s provided an insight into how its AI is helping to remove the worst of the web. “In the report, you'll see that in the first three months of this year we took down 837 million pieces of spam and disabled 583 million fake accounts,” wrote Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a post. “Thanks to AI tools we've built, almost all of the spam was removed before anyone reported it, and most of the fake accounts were...

16 May 2018 | Surveillance

Facebook trained its AI using 3.5 billion Instagram images

Facebook has a vast amount of data at its disposal for training AI algorithms, including billions of users' Instagram images. The social media giant acquired Instagram for $1 billion in 2012. At the time, some criticised its value with its 30 million users. Now, however, the platform has over 800 million active monthly users. Facebook trained a machine learning algorithm to categorise images by itself using over 3.5 billion posted on Instagram. The algorithm took into account the 17,000...

4 May 2018 | Machine Learning

Editorial: Facebook excluding the EU from AI advancement heralds a trend

EU regulations have forced Facebook to exclude citizens of member states from its new AI-powered suicide prevention tool, and it heralds a worrying trend. Facebook’s new suicide prevention tool aims to use pattern recognition to detect posts or live videos where someone might be expressing thoughts of suicide, and to help respond to reports faster. In a post announcing the feature, Facebook wrote: “We are starting to roll out artificial intelligence outside the US to help identify...

28 November 2017 | Regulation

Facebook is helping Intel with AI for the first Neural Network Processor

The CEO of Intel has revealed Facebook is providing its AI knowledge ahead of the launch of the world’s first Neural Network Processor. Brian Krzanich made the comment during an on-stage interview at the WSJD Live conference in Laguna Beach, California. The news Intel is working on its own AI chips is no surprise, but the choice of partner may be. "This is the first piece of silicon," Krzanich said. "We have a whole family planned for this, (Facebook) is helping us, along with others,...

18 October 2017 | Hardware

Facebook’s CherryPi ranked sixth in ‘StarCraft’ tournament of AI bots

Facebook participated in a StarCraft tournament which pitted artificial intelligent “bots” against each other instead of humans. Facebook’s “CherryPi” AI bot ranked sixth in the overall tournament with 2,049 wins out of 2,966 games. The StarCraft AI competition made use of the original StarCraft PC game and its expansion, Brood War. The motive behind this was to evaluate the state of artificial intelligence and how it handles real-time strategy games. This genre poses a challenge...

12 October 2017 | Bots

Facebook’s AI-driven M assistant chatbot reaches the UK

facebook ai chatbot m assistant

Facebook’s AI-driven M assistant chatbot has safely made it across the Atlantic and is now helping Messenger users in the UK. The chatbot will butt into your conversations if it feels it can be of assistance. For example, when discussing making plans it could find you nearby places, create a poll about where to go, and find time in participants’ diaries. When you arrive you could follow up with a question like “Where are you?” and the chatbot will prompt the other person to send...

16 August 2017 | Bots