--- title: "Microsoft Quietly Deletes Massive Facial Recognition Database" description: "Microsoft just quietly deleted a facial recognition database that contains more than 10 million images of around 100,000 people." date: "2019-06-06" modified: "2019-06-06" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/microsoft-deletes-facial-recognition-database" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Cybersecurity" - "Data Privacy" - "Facial recognition" - "Future Society" tags: - "data privacy" - "facial recognition" - "microsoft" --- # Microsoft Quietly Deletes Massive Facial Recognition Database ![]() *Microsoft just quietly deleted a facial recognition database that contains more than 10 million images of around 100,000 people — most of them known celebrities. \Image: Shutterstock/Victor Tangermann\* ## Facial Recognition Microsoft just quietly deleted a facial recognition database of more than 10 million images of around 100,000 people — most of them known celebrities — [*Engadget* reports](). The news comes after Microsoft has actively tried to distance itself from the technology. "The world is on the threshold of technology that would give a government the ability to follow anyone anywhere," Brad Smith, the President of Microsoft, [warned]() in November 2018, calling for facial recognition software to be regulated. ## MS Celeb The company's MS Celeb training dataset was lauded as the "largest publicly available one in the world" when it was created in 2016. It was designed to train tools for image captioning and news video analysis, according to Microsoft Research's [paper]() on the matter. The images were pulled from Creative Commons databases, but the subjects in the 10 million images were not asked for consent, as the [*Financial Times* reports](). "The site was intended for academic purposes," read an official statement received by the *Financi**a**l Times*. "It was run by an employee that is no longer with Microsoft and has since been removed." ## Caught in the Act? The dataset, along with two other massive and very similar databases hosted by Duke and Stanford University researchers, was [discovered by Adam Harvey](), a Berlin-based artist and researcher. "Microsoft has exploited the term 'celebrity' to include people who merely work online and have a digital identity," said Harvey [in a statement](). "Many people in the target list are even vocal critics of the very technology Microsoft is using their name and biometric information to build." **READ MORE:** [Microsoft quietly deletes largest public face recognition data set]() \[*Financial Times*\] **More on facial recognition tech:** *[The US Army’s Next Rifle May Use Facial Recognition]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()