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Clearview AI will stop selling its facial recognition technology to private companies
The controversial facial recognition firm Clearview AI Inc. has stopped selling its technology to private companies, it was reported today.
According to Buzzfeed News, the company is “is cancelling the accounts of every customer who was not either associated with law enforcement or some other federal, state, or local government department, office, or agency.”
Clearview was facing numerous lawsuits before this was announced. Privacy advocates were unanimous in condemning the company, which has boasted that it can ID a person in real time after pulling billions of images off social media platforms.
In February, Clearview came under the spotlight after its customer database was breached, leading some privacy experts to say that criminal organizations would “view compromise of its systems as a priority.”
After that breach, it became more clear that that the technology was being used for commercial purposes. That led to the state of Illinois to file a lawsuit against Clearview for breaching the state’s privacy laws. Clearview has now said that in that particular state it will not sell its technology to anyone, whether law enforcement or private companies.
Prior to this move, Clearview was reported as having 105 customers in Illinois, which included the Chicago Police Department and the office of the Illinois Secretary of State. The majority of the customers were related to law enforcement, though not all were.
“Clearview AI continues to pursue its core mission: to assist law enforcement agencies around the nation in identifying perpetrators and victims of crime, including horrific crimes such as trafficking and child abuse,” Clearview’s lawyer, Lee Wolosky, told BuzzFeed. “It is committed to abiding by all laws applicable to it.”
Clearview has also come under fire from the companies from whom it scrapes its images. In February, both Google LLC and Twitter Inc. demanded that Clearview stop collecting data from their platforms as a means to identify the public.
At the same time, several senators expressed concerns regarding public privacy. It was revealed then that Clearview was selling its technology to more than 2,000 police departments, government agencies and private companies in as many as 27 countries.
Photo: AC RT/Flickr
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