June 8, 2021

A group of 50 investors, led by wealth manager Candriam, recently called on companies such as Amazon and Facebook, which are working on using facial recognition technology, to do so ethically.

The technology could infringe users’ privacy rights due to the lack of consent of those identified and also the fact that there is often no official oversight.

While the investor group said it considers 34 companies to be leaders in facial recognition, including Amazon, Facebook, Alibaba, Huawei and others, it said it would begin a two-year process of working with companies that develop or deploy facial recognition technologies.

According to Rosa van den Beemt, one of the investors who joined the initiative, “For investors to be able to fulfill our own responsibility to respect human rights, we call on companies to proactively assess, disclose, mitigate and remediate human rights risks related to their facial recognition products and services.”

For more information, read the original story in Reuters.