Does onedrive have facial recognition or not?

Ha! I just switched from Amazon Photos to OneDrive today as Amazon no longer supports 2-way file sync of photos so you can access them from Windows File Explorer via the Pictures folder.

I was wondering what OneDrive Photos was missing in features as I heard it's not quite as robust as Amazon or Google Photos (which both don't have 2-way file sync like OneDrive has.) And I ran across the same documentation on the Face Recognition. So spent a couple hours pulling my hair out trying to figure out if it was just a delay or I didn't have the feature. It sure identified "things" might quick. So not sure why it can't do the same for people.

THE MAIN POINT IS: There should NOT be information published as if the feature is available if indeed it is not!!! Creates a lot of confusion and WASTED TIME. NOT cool.

Hello Nick C 2024,

Welcome to the Microsoft Community.

The official documentation for the feature description was written a long time ago (at least a couple of months), but unfortunately, until today, this feature has not been officially launched yet, even in Beta version. I fully understand your urgency.

Group photos by people - Microsoft Support

As of 01/01/2025....

• I still have access to all the people Onedrive grouped in 2024 at https://photos.onedrive.com/people/
• At https://onedrive.live.com/?v=tagpreferences I still have the option to enable or disable this feature.
• Each person has their own automatically grouped album at https://photos.onedrive.com/people/person/r!xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• I have a "people" section on the OneDrive Android App and on the web, as well as enable/disable switch in app prefs.

See screenshots below, all taken on 01/01/2025.

When I go and look at group of faces, as of today, 01/01/2025, it is still finding faces in pre-September 2024 photos and asking me to confirm if it is the same person.

It appears that the recognition stopped working for new photos around 4th September 2024. It was only when I went to make a couple of "year in review" albums this morning that I noticed this. It's extremely frustrating as I spent an entire day naming each group, and there are 600+ photos in some groups.

Based on the results of our investigation, we must inform you that it appears Microsoft has deactivated this feature for reasons that are currently unclear. We appreciate your interest in the photo categorization feature based on AI auto-recognition of portraits. However, we recognize that there are still improvements to be made, thus the feature is currently unavailable.

If what you say is correct, it is completely unacceptable for Microsoft to withdraw a service which forms part of a paid-for service (I have OneDrive premium), without giving the user any advance warning.

Note: I am in the UK, and I have seen some confusion over the status of EU regulation surrounding facial recognition. Having left the European Union, the UK is no longer subject to EU law on this subject, which is why Google Photos is able to allow recognition and other services not allowed in EU member countries. This might be the source of some of the confusion?

Hello Nick C 2024,

Welcome to the Microsoft Community.

The official documentation for the feature description was written a long time ago (at least a couple of months), but unfortunately, until today, this feature has not been officially launched yet, even in Beta version. I fully understand your urgency.

Group photos by people - Microsoft Support

This is a technical support community that is not involved in the product design and development process, so we cannot directly address this issue for you. The exact timing of the official launch will depend on the OneDrive team's development progress, and they may not always report on the progress of product features with this community. So unfortunately we may not be able to provide you with an exact time of availability for this feature.

As this can only be resolved by the OneDrive team, I would recommend that you contact the OneDrive team directly to provide feedback on your issue and see if you can get any information on the development progress of Face Recognition Categorization.

You can email the OneDrive support team by clicking the link below: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=528676P.S. Before clicking on the link, you need to visit onedrive.live.com with your browser and sign in with your Microsoft account, then clicking on the link will automatically redirect to the OneDrive webpage to send an email.

Thank you for supporting Microsoft products and have a great day.

Best regards,

Ian - MSFT | Microsoft Community Support Specialist