Startup ClearView AI has come under fire for using over 30 billion photographs collected from social media sites without the consent of those pictured. Heana Tons-That, the founder and general director of the company, confirmed that their person recognition system had collected the photos, alongside processing more than a million search queries for American police services.
The system is used by Miami police in its investigations, according to a department spokesperson, who said ClearView AI had already helped solve several murders and is accessed around 450 times a year. Despite its effectiveness, the service has been criticized for accessing images without permission.
ClearView’s facial recognition technology is among the most accurate in the world. The software works by allowing users to upload a photo of a person’s face, which is then compared to billions of images stored in ClearView’s database to identify matches. The results show where images of the person can be found on the web
ClearView AI has received scrutiny from UK regulators in the past. In January 2020, the company was fined more than £7.5m ($9.4m, €8.8m) by the UK’s data watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), for breaching privacy laws. The fine was issued after ClearView collected images of people without their consent, and the ICO ordered the company to stop collecting the personal data of UK residents and delete any existing British data from their systems.