Major Tech Platforms Demand Halt to Controversial Facial Recognition App
Google, YouTube, Venmo, and LinkedIn send cease-and-desist letters to Clearview AI, demanding the company stop scraping user images for its law enforcement facial recognition tool.
Google, YouTube, Venmo, and LinkedIn send cease-and-desist letters to Clearview AI, a facial recognition app that scrapes billions of images from the internet. The tech companies demand that the startup stop collecting photos from their platforms, joining Twitter, which issues a similar letter in January. These platforms argue that Clearview AI explicitly violates their terms of service by gathering data that can identify individuals without consent.
Clearview AI boasts a database of three billion images and claims its software achieves 99.6% accuracy in identifying people. The company restricts the app exclusively to law enforcement agencies for use in criminal investigations after a crime occurs. CEO Hoan Ton-That defends the technology by stating it is not a real-time surveillance system, but rather a tool for solving cases after the fact.
Despite these claims of responsible use, social media platforms actively work to block the app and protect user privacy. Twitter goes a step further by demanding that Clearview AI delete all previously collected data from its network. As privacy concerns grow, these major tech companies unite in their efforts to shut down the unauthorized scraping of user information and defend the rights of people who use their services.