Meta is rolling out a free Facebook Verified badge that uses a facial recognition selfie to confirm there is a real person behind an account, its latest attempt to help users tell humans apart from the AI-generated profiles proliferating across the platform.
To qualify, a user submits a selfie that Meta checks against the existing photos on their profile, a process the company says takes a few minutes. Applicants must be over 18 and in good standing with Facebook’s community standards. Once verified, the badge appears across Marketplace, Dating, and other parts of Facebook’s services. Meta is drawing a sharp line between this and its old verification: the new badge is explicitly identity confirmation only, not an endorsement or a guarantee of trustworthiness, and unlike the paid Meta Verified subscription, it is free.
The feature is a direct response to generative AI. Meta points to a wave of scammers using AI tools to spin up fake profiles with realistic images and backstories that can send automated messages at scale, and casts the badge as a way to give users some protection from that fraud. The badge will roll out gradually from Monday, starting in select markets with plans to expand globally, and will not be available for Pages or business-style accounts.
The choice of facial recognition is notable given Meta’s fraught history with the technology. The company has faced biometric privacy litigation and public pushback, including over facial recognition in its smart glasses, making a selfie-based check a pointed bet that the fraud problem now outweighs the reputational risk. Meta previously retreated from face recognition entirely before reintroducing it in narrower anti-scam and identity contexts.
That history is still live in the courts and in Meta’s own product decisions, from the appeals court that recently vacated a Clearview AI biometric privacy settlement to Meta’s move to license Rank One Computing’s face recognition for smart glasses testing. Facebook Verified extends face matching from Meta’s hardware ambitions into the core social graph, where the scale of AI-driven impersonation is largest.
Sources: Engadget
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
