Republic of Korea: Personal Information Protection Commission approved Meta's celebrity impersonation blocking service

On 28 May 2025, Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) approved Meta’s preliminary adequacy review for a facial recognition-based service aimed at detecting and blocking celebrity impersonation in advertisements and accounts. The service targets fraudulent content exploiting deepfakes and similar technologies. With a celebrity’s consent, Meta registers and stores their facial features. These are then used to compare with images in flagged ads or accounts to identify impersonation. If a match is found, the content is blocked or removed. Should consent be withdrawn, the data is deleted. The system includes human review and objection procedures. To address privacy concerns, Meta consulted with the PIPC and introduced safeguards, including facial features from suspect images are processed only once and deleted immediately after comparison. The technology is strictly limited to verifying whether an individual is a registered celebrity. Meta is required to provide server logs and supporting documents to the PIPC for compliance checks. Users are informed that their advertising or public profile images may be briefly processed for impersonation detection. The PIPC plans to verify the implementation after launch and noted that such reviews can help reduce legal uncertainty and mitigate privacy risks for new technologies.