OneDrive’s AI face scanning feature suggests it can only be disabled 3 times a year — but that doesn’t seem right

by

For nearly two years, Microsoft has been gradually introducing a OneDrive feature that uses artificial intelligence to identify faces in your photos. However, it was recently found that users may only be able to turn this feature off a limited number of times – up to three times per year.

As first reported by Slashdot (through PCGamer), a new feature allowing users to enable or disable AI face scanning has a limit: you can only turn it off three times per year. The reason for this restriction isn’t clear, and Microsoft hasn’t offered an explanation despite being asked by Slashdot.

It looks like the previous limitation might no longer be accurate. I can freely turn the AI face scanning feature on or off within OneDrive on the web, and there’s no mention of a limit of only three uses per year.

Microsoft explains on its support website that the OneDrive app can collect and store facial scans and biometric data from your photos to group faces together. If you disable this feature in your OneDrive settings, all of that data will be permanently deleted within 30 days.

Microsoft emphasizes that this feature doesn’t train its AI models. Any data collected is used solely to personalize and improve the feature *for you* – it’s never shared and only benefits your own account. As Microsoft states, your facial scans and biometric information are used to improve *your* results, not to improve the AI overall.

OneDrive has been gradually adding a face recognition feature to photos, and it seems to turn on automatically for most people. While it’s still being tested and isn’t available to everyone yet, the help page for this feature is misleading. It suggests you can only enable or disable face recognition a few times per year, which isn’t actually true.

As a researcher, I’ve found that most users who want to disable this feature will likely only need to do so once, meaning the current limit of three times a year shouldn’t be an issue. Thankfully, it appears we can currently enable or disable it ourselves through the OneDrive website, which offers a good degree of control.

Read More

2025-10-13 15:10