Facebook's 'Photo Magic' Knows Who Your Friends Are

— -- Facebook is testing a new feature called "Photo Magic" that recognizes friends’ faces in a user’s camera roll and asks whether the user wants to share photographs with the people included in them via Messenger.

David Marcus, head of Messenger, confirmed the news in a post on his Facebook wall Monday night.

"This is one of our upcoming features I'm really excited about as it's still way too difficult to share photos with friends, and receive all the ones you're in," Marcus wrote

The feature, which leverages the same facial recognition technology used for photo tag suggestions on Facebook, is being tested on users in Australia beginning this week. If the test goes well, Marcus wrote, he expects the feature will be available to users in the United States "soon."

Facebook users who don’t want to be recognized can opt out by going to their timeline and tagging settings and turning off tag suggestions.

Facebook has been rolling out new ways for its more than 700 million Messenger users to engage through the service. Recent updates include the capability to message with businesses and "message requests," a new feature Marcus said will make it easier to connect with anyone you need to reach while also giving recipients more privacy controls for the messages they accept.