Since one of the latest updates for digikam (I think starting with version 7), digikam asks to download a face recognition engine on each startup with no option to skip the question that I can find. I find it very disconcerting that a packaged application would even ask for such a download (that engine doesn't seem to be packaged), but at least there should be an option for getting rid of it after seeing it one time.
Regards, Achim.