'We must ensure that the year 2024 doesn't look like a page from the novel '1984':' Microsoft president urges government regulation of facial recognition technology

Microsoft said Thursday it was adopting a set of ethical principles for the use of its facial recognition technology, and urged the government to follow its lead with regulations barring unlawful discrimination and focusing on transparency.

In a blog post, Microsoft president Brad Smith pushed for the government, as well as tech companies, to regulate facial recognition technology and ensure it "creates broad societal benefits while curbing the risk of abuse."

"The facial recognition genie, so to speak, is just emerging from the bottle," Smith said in the post. "Unless we act, we risk waking up five years from now to find that facial recognition services have spread in ways that exacerbate societal issues."

Smith urged regulation that covers three areas: bias and discrimination, people's privacy, and democratic freedoms and human rights.

Identifying faces has become a common feature in consumer products including Apple Inc's iPhone, with Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google offering recognition services as well.

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But questions have been raised over the use of such technology.

U.S. civil liberties groups in May called on Amazon to stop offering facial recognition services to governments, warning that the software could be used to target immigrants and people of color unfairly.

Microsoft said in the blog post it will document and communicate the capabilities of the technology, as well as prohibit the use of facial recognition technology to engage in unlawful discrimination.

The other principles listed were fairness, accountability, notice and consent, and lawful surveillance.

Microsoft has also not promised to bar sale of face recognition technology to law enforcement, which is what the American Civil Liberties Union has asked for.

Microsoft said it would formally launch these principles, together with supporting framework, before the end of March 2019, but did not detail how it would implement its new principles.