[1] Facebook and Instagram owner Meta is testing new technology to crack down on scammers who pretend to be celebrities.

[2] The tech giant is rolling out new facial recognition techniques to take down fake profiles that are getting more and more sophisticated.

[3] NBC News Daily anchor Vicky Nguyen got an exclusive interview with a leading official at Meta about their new initiative aimed at fighting back.

[4] "What we're doing is testing facial recognition technology in two ways. One is to stop ads that look like they're celebrity endorsements but are really just scams."

[5] "And the other is to make it easier and safer for people to get back into their Facebook or Instagram account if they've been locked out."

[6] The celebrity impersonation scams have been around for years. They've cost consumers hundreds of millions of dollars. Why has it taken so long to bring a tool like this into the testing phase?

[7] "I want to acknowledge that this is an industry-wide problem that we've really seen growing since the start of the pandemic."

[8] "We have hundreds of millions of people using our services, and we want to make sure we are doing right by them."

[9] "With celebrity bait ads, this is basically scammers trying to use a celebrity to trick somebody into clicking on that ad to take them off to a website or somewhere else where they can ask them for personal information or money."

[10] "When we detect an ad that we think might be a scam featuring a celebrity, the facial recognition technology will assess the face in that ad, including the eyes, the shape of the nose, a freckle on the cheek."

[11] "And it will then compare that face to the celebrity's profile photos on their Instagram or Facebook accounts. And if we can determine there's a match, then we can just block that ad immediately."

[12] "Can you give us a sense of, you know, how frequently, how many millions of users in a given time period are complaining that they've been locked out of their account or that their account has been compromised in some way?"

[13] "You know, it's a problem that we see, and I don't have a number on how many, but I'll say, anybody having this experience is too many."

[14] "Because we know that people will have, they've got really important things to them on their account. We need to make sure that if they're locked out, they have a way back in."

[15] "It's tricky because we also have to make sure we are not letting scammers abuse those channels to say, 'Hey, I've been locked out of an account. Let me back in.' We don't want to allow them to falsely take over somebody's account that way."

[16] "This video selfie option is going to be the fastest and the most secure way of confirming that you are the rightful account owner."

[17] "How will this video selfie tool work?" - "You're going to use your phone to take a video of your face. Then, you will upload that video to us in a way that is secure and encrypted.

[18] "The facial recognition technology will assess that video, and it's going to compare that face to the face on your profile photos in the account that you're trying to get back into."

[19] "We've seen in other platforms or other avenues where facial recognition technology is used, for example with law enforcement or with security, there have been lawsuits filed and allegations of racial profiling. How will you address those concerns?"

[20] "One of the reasons that we are testing these tools globally is because it's so important for us to make sure that the tools work across all different people in all different cultures."

[21] "We have more than two billion people using our apps, so making sure that it works for all of those people means we've got to really test it now."