The ability to recognize human faces has always been a benchmark for artificial intelligence. Facebook’s new facial recognition technology–called DeepFace–comes astonishingly close to human intelligence in that measure. Although it’s currently still a research project–which Facebook will present as a paper at a computer vision conference this June–DeepFace has shown itself to be almost as accurate as the human brain when it comes to saying whether two photos show the same person, regardless of whether different lighting or camera angles are used. This has enormous implications for both users and Facebook going forward. Potential applications include everything from improved photo tagging and more accurate online ad selection to more foolproof user authentication. It also poses some serious ethical questions.