( Mashable ) -- Facebook Photos , one of the social network 's most popular features , is getting a big and potentially controversial upgrade with a new feature that automatically suggests who users should tag in photos based on facial recognition technology . The new feature , Tag Suggestions , will begin rolling out to U.S. users next week , according to Facebook Vice President of Product Chris Cox . He told us that the product utilizes technology that was built in-house , as well as some technology that came from partners . Cox did not disclose the partners Facebook worked with for Tag Suggestions , although we have our suspicions . Tag Suggestions is fairly straightforward . Whenever you 're offered the chance to tag groups of your friends in an album , Facebook will utilize its facial recognition technology to group similar faces together and automatically suggest the friend you should tag them with . Facebook fills in the `` Who is this ? '' box with its suggestion -- all you have to do is click the `` Save Tags '' button to accept . Cox says that suggestions will only appear when its algorithms have `` high confidence '' of who 's being suggested . Unlike Face.com , Facebook does n't reveal its certainty level and would n't reveal what percentage actually correlates to `` high confidence . '' The social giant is also preemptively addressing the potential privacy issues that will be brought up from automatic , algorithmic tagging . Users can opt out of Tag Suggestions by going to their privacy settings and disabling the `` Suggest photos of me to friends '' feature . This release is part of a bigger effort to upgrade Photos . Earlier this year , Facebook launched a slew of upgrades , including bigger thumbnails , group tagging and drag-and-drop photos . This may be the biggest upgrade for Photos yet , though . Photo tagging is considered a chore by many users , yet it is the company 's most popular product . `` Photos are by far the most engaging content Facebook has ever had , '' Cox told us earlier today . By vastly simplifying the tagging process , Facebook expects that its millions of users will tag more photos , which will create millions of new engagement points and social connections , making it that much more addicting . © 2013 MASHABLE.com . All rights reserved .
Facebook photos getting a big and potentially controversial upgrade . Comment: Suggestions will only appear when algorithms have `` high confidence ''