Amazon joins Microsoft in expressing support for regulating facial recognition tech, offers guidelines for the “responsible use” of the technology
Amazon supports the creation of a “legislative framework” covering facial recognition technology.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the second act of a fight Amazon has been managing since mid-2018, when the ACLU's Rekognition test forced it to concede that government has a role in policing law-enforcement use of the tech. AWS chief Andy Jassy then formalized that stance at a staff meeting, arguing it was Washington's duty to specify the rules while Amazon kept selling.
By publishing 'responsible use' guidelines alongside a call for a legislative framework, Amazon is now matching Microsoft's stepped-up regulatory advocacy — converting a defensive posture into a joint industry position that pre-empts how any future rules get written.
First-order effects
- Amazon shifts the burden of defining acceptable Rekognition use onto lawmakers, giving its government customers and critics a single documented standard to hold it against.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft gains cover for its own regulatory lobbying rather than standing alone as the vendor asking for oversight, and rival sellers of facial recognition — IBM among them — face pressure to either match the guidelines or explain why they won't.
Third-order effects
- The vendor-led playbook escalates rather than resolves: by mid-2020 Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft had all imposed a moratorium on police facial recognition sales while lawmakers said federal legislation was unlikely within a year, leaving companies writing de facto rules in the absence of statutory ones.
The trend: Cloud vendors are moving from defending facial recognition sales to actively shaping — and where legislation stalls, substituting for — the regulation of it.