Facebook has announced it will no longer use facial-recognition software to identify faces in photographs and videos. There have been growing concerns about the ethics of facial recognition technology, with questions raised over privacy, racial bias, and accuracy. Photo: BBC

Regulators had not yet provided a clear set of rules over how it should be used, the company said.

It has faced a barrage of criticism over its impact on its users.

Until now, users of the social media app could choose to opt in to the feature which would scan their face in pictures and notify them if someone else on the platform had posted a picture of them.

In a blog post, Jerome Pesenti, Vice President of artificial intelligence at the firm said: "Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate."

In 2019, a US government study suggested facial recognition algorithms were far less accurate at identifying African-American and Asian faces compared to Caucasian faces.

African-American women were even more likely to be misidentified, according to the study conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Last year, Facebook also settled a long-running legal dispute about the way it scans and tags photos.

The case has been ongoing since 2015, and it was agreed the firm would pay $550m (£421m) to a group of users in Illinois who argued its facial recognition tool was in violation of the state's privacy laws.