Facebook says it is ending its facial recognition system that automatically identifies users in pictures and videos. The company’s Vice President of Artificial Intelligence, Jerome Pesenti, announced the change this week in a statement on the company’s corporate website. Pesenti said the decision to end the system was “part of a company-wide move to limit the use of facial recognition in our products.” The facial recognition system on Facebook is to be ended “in the coming weeks.” The move comes as the social media service faces accusations that it failed to take action to protect users even though its own research suggested its products can be harmful. In the past, Facebook has also faced widespread criticism for not doing enough to protect the privacy of its users. The decision also followed a company announcement that it was changing its name from Facebook to Meta. Industry experts have said the name change appeared to be an attempt to move attention away from unfavorable media attention in recent months. “This change will represent one of the largest shifts in facial recognition usage in the technology’s history,” Pesenti said in his statement. As a result, “more than a billion people’s individual facial recognition templates” will be removed, the statement added. Meta has said that more than a third of Facebook’s daily active users have given their permission to have their faces recognized by the social network’s system. That represents about 640 million people worldwide. Facebook first started offering facial recognition about 10 years ago. But over time, it has made it easier for users to opt out of the system as it faced more pressure from courts and government officials. Pesenti said the company still sees facial recognition technology as a powerful tool. But he noted that the situations where it can be helpful “need to be weighed against growing concerns about this technology as a whole.”