Clearview

Clearview AI, the shady US facial recognition firm whose surveillance tech is used by at least 2,400 law enforcement agencies, says police have run nearly a million searches using its service. The company’s database of images scraped from social media sites now reportedly numbers around 30 billion, a staggering 50% increase from figures reported just last year. Despite repeated fines and years of pushback from civil liberties organizations, the figures suggest business is still booming for Clearview.Should Facial…

Clearview AI, the controversial facial recognition software used by at least 3,100 law enforcement agencies across the US, has scrapped more than 30 billion images from social media platforms like Facebook. CEO Hoan Ton-That shared the statistic in a recent interview with (via ) where he also said the company had run nearly 1 million searches for US police. Last March, Clearview its database featured more than 20 billion “publicly available” images, meaning the platform has grown by a staggering 50 percent over the past…

Pimeyes is technically different from Clearview because it does not store faces in a database, but instead searches the internet for faces when a user uploads a picture, according to privacy experts. The platform is also much more open; anyone can search the site for free, although to see the links where photos are found, they have to pay a monthly fee starting at $36.The company’s CEO, a professor named Giorgi Gobronidze, also stresses that unlike Clearview, Pimeyes does not crawl social media platforms, such as…

It was the scariest night of Andrew Grantt Conlyn’s life. He sat in the passenger seat of a two-door 1997 Ford Mustang, clutching his seat belt, as his friend drove approximately 100 mph down a palm-tree-lined avenue in Fort Myers, Florida. His friend, inebriated and distraught, occasionally swerved onto the wrong side of the road to pass cars that were complying with the 35 mph speed limit. “Someone is going to die tonight,” Conlyn thought. And then his friend hit a curb and lost control of the car. The Mustang began…

Facial recognition company Clearview AI has been fined more than £7.5m by the UK's privacy watchdog. Following France, Italy, and Australia's suit, Clearview has had its vision cut short in the UK. Although the company argues it stores facial images as a safety initiative, Clearview AI takes publicly posted pictures online, usually without the platform's knowledge or permission. In this thread, our community discusses Clearview's endeavor and the backlash that followed.Slogging (Slack Blogging)Your Slack? Insightful words…

This week, Devindra and Deputy Editor Nathan Ingraham dive into the latest news around Clearview AI, the controversial facial recognition company that’s now seeing pushback from governments and regulators around the world. Will a few fines put a stop to the company’s facial recognition search platform? Also, they discuss how Clearview’s troubles relate to countries being more restrictive about data in general. Finally, they pour one out for Seth Green’s lost Bored Ape – RIP NFT! Listen above, or subscribe on your podcast…

Clearview AI is expanding sales of its facial recognition software to companies from mainly serving the police, it told Reuters, inviting scrutiny on how the startup capitalizes on billions of photos it scrapes from social media profiles.Sales could be significant for Clearview, a presenter on Wednesday at the Montgomery Summit investor conference in California. It fuels an emerging debate over the ethics of leveraging disputed data to design artificial intelligence systems such as facial recognition.Clearview's usage of…

Controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI has been fined more than $10 million by the UK’s data protection watchdog for collecting the faces of UK citizens from the web and social media. The firm was also ordered to delete all of the data it holds on UK citizens.The move by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is the latest in a string of high-profile fines against the company as data protection authorities around the world eye tougher restrictions on its practices.Clearview AI boasts one of the…

Europe is working on an AI law that could ban the use of “real-time” remote biometric identification systems, such as facial recognition, in public places. The current drafting of the text restricts the use of facial recognition from law enforcement unless it is to fight serious crime, such as terrorism or kidnappings.  There is a possibility that the EU will go further. The EU’s influential data protection watchdogs have called for the bill to not only ban remote biometric identification in public, but the police use of…

Controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI has been ordered to delete all data belonging to UK residents by the country’s privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO also fined Clearview £7.5 million ($9.4 million) for failing to follow the UK’s data protection laws. It’s the fourth time Clearview has been ordered to delete national data in this way, following similar orders and fines issued in Australia, France, and Italy. Clearview claims to have scraped 20 billion images from…