Clearview Clears 30 Billion Scraped Images, Has Been Accessed More Than 1 Million Times By Law Enforcement
All hail the pariah. If Clearview is only at 30 billion images, it just means social media users haven't been posting enough.
The little scraper that could has pushed its way to the next plateau of unacceptableness, turning the 10 billion images it had as recently as October 2021 to 30 billion before EOY2024. Plaudits all around, asshats. If nothing else, you're a cautionary tale of oversharing - albeit one sued, exiled, benchslapped, and fined by pretty much every major nation in Europe.
If that's the reputation you want, congrats: you've earned it. Clearview: shitbird among shitbirds. The worst case scenario for facial recognition tech. Billions of images linked to AI that has been pitched and sold to autocrats, law enforcement, gyms, random ass billionaires, etc. Power irreparably decoupled from responsibility, and continually pitching itself as the darling of whatever it is customers want it to be.
The AI garbage pail kid is at it again, as it freely (and proudly!) admitted [bragged!] to UK journalists. It's making the numbers that count. And those numbers are the numbers that are bigger than previous numbers, as Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert reports for Insider. (h/t Michael Vario)
A controversial facial recognition database, used by police departments across the nation, was built in part with 30 billion photos the company scraped from Facebook and other social media users without their permission, the company's CEO recently admitted, creating what critics called a perpetual police line-up," even for people who haven't done anything wrong.
The company, Clearview AI, boasts of its potential for identifying rioters at the January 6 attack on the Capitol, saving children being abused or exploited, and helping exonerate people wrongfully accused of crimes.
Controversial" is putting it lightly. The company currently owes multiple millions in fines to European Union members, as well as its self-exiled redheaded stepchild, the recently extremely reactionary United Kingdom. And for all its boasting and try before you buy" promotions, there's scant evidence Clearview has been instrumental in law enforcement investigations. Clearview has always said it's invaluable. It's customers (even those using free trial access) are not so sure.
Clearview is more famous for the size of its (scraped) database than its usefulness in criminal investigations. Nonetheless, it continues to brag about how often cops have wasted time trawling its voluminous offerings, apparently mistaking quantity for quality. This is from the BBC interview prompting the Insider article:
Facial recognition firm Clearview has run nearly a million searches for US police, its founder has told the BBC.
Quantity is not quality, I repeat. And even the quantity being presented as quality by Clearview CEO Hoan Ton-That is questionable.
The figure of a million searches comes from Clearview and has not been confirmed by police.
Hey, nothing sells like salesmanship says the company that apparently believes all prophecies to be self-fulfilling. And nothing gathers press like a lot of numbers that can't be easily verified... like 30 billion images or the Million Cop March on Clearview's facial recognition database.
Rest assured, Clearview continues to scrape anything that's not locked down. Its image database will always continue to grow. But with it facing legal troubles pretty much everywhere, it's less likely its law enforcement customer base will show similar year-over-year growth. But public records requesters are incapable of constantly auditing law enforcement use of Clearview tech (something that should rightfully be handled by the entities that are paid to oversee law enforcement agencies), so there will always be a credibility gap Clearview and its vocal CEO can't leap.
Clearview wants to be viewed as a public good. But all it has to offer is billions of images scraped without permission and unproven claims about being McGruff's eyes and ears on the digital streets. Assume it's all bullshit until proven otherwise. Billions in, but nearly nothing out. At best, Clearview is an internet remora.