Facebook Says Groups to Lose Stories Feature, Picks 6 Projects From India for AI Ethics Research

Facebook has announced it will soon shut down its group stories feature which allows administrators and members of the social media's groups to post videos and photos that disappear within 24 hours, media reported on Saturday.

The company is shutting down this feature on September 26. Soon, the existing group stories will be deleted and users will not be able to post any new stories, CNET reported.

"We're sunsetting group stories because we want to make sure that features in groups enable people to connect in fun and useful ways, and we are always looking at ways to improve the overall experience for communities on Facebook," a Facebook spokesman said.

Facebook groups are an online space where the users come together and chat about common interests. As per report, more than 1.4 billion people on Facebook use groups every month.

The removal of Stories in Groups was first reported by social media guru Matt Navarra on Saturday.

Separately, to encourage research on artificial intelligence (AI) ethics, Facebook announced it has selected six projects from India that will focus on three key areas - governance, cultural diversity and operationalising ethics.

The winners, declared on Friday, included the top two submissions in each category. Facebook announced the Ethics in AI research awards in June with a regional focus of India. The proposed budget should be within Rs. 10,00,000 to Rs. 20,00,000, Facebook said.

In the operationalising ethics category, the two selected projects include "Patient-Centric Frameworks for the Evaluation of AI-Enabled Medical Tests" that has Amit Sethi of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT Bombay) as the principal investigator and "Targeted Bias in Indian Media Outlets" that has Animesh Mukherjee of the Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur (IIT Kharagpur) as the principal investigator.

One of the research projects picked for the governance category, "Ethical Implications of Delegating Decision-making Journey to AI Systems", has Rahul De from the Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore (IIM Bangalore)

The other project selected for the governance category, "A‘Public Law of Information' for India", has Sudhir Krishnaswamy from the Centre for Law and Policy Research as its principal investigator.

"Mitigating Bias in Face Recognition for Vast Regional Diversity in India" which has Richa Singh from Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology-Delhi (IIIT-Delhi) as principal investigator is one of the projects selected in the cultural diversity category.

The other project is "Regulatory Impact Assessment of the National AI Market Place of India" which has Varadharajan Sridhar from the International Institute of Information Technology-Bangalore (IIIT-Bangalore) as principal investigator.