The US IT giant Meta Platforms says it will shut down the facial recognition system of its Facebook social media platform in response to growing privacy concerns.

It made the announcement on Tuesday on its official blog. Facebook renamed itself Meta Platforms last week.

The facial recognition system automatically identifies users in photos and videos posted on Facebook with the help of AI and then notifies the users.

Amid growing concern that this is an infringement of privacy, Meta said in the announcement, "We believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate."

It plans to do away with the system in several weeks' time.

The data of more than 1 billion people stored for this function will be deleted.

The Facebook operator has been coming under growing criticism over its data management after a former employee leaked internal documents to the US Congress.

Meta will likely face further scrutiny over the issue of privacy protection as it aims to focus on its next-generation "metaverse" online space service.