Hundreds of US police departments use Clearview AI

Hundreds of police departments in the US use Clearview AI, the software that tries to recognize suspects and witnesses by comparing them to a database of billions of photos online. In the US, prosecutors and defense both use the software.

Those hundreds of police departments have made a total of nearly a million searches through the software, reports BBC based on an interview with the founder of Clearview. The software has a database of 30 billion photos of individuals that it collected online without permission. Companies in the US are not allowed to use the software, but police departments are. Clearview is not known to be in use in Europe.

In the US, Clearview is also used in court by prosecutors and defense, but there are no figures on how often that happens. The software compares a photo that a user uploads with a database. It is said to include more than three billion people. Then the software tries to find a match based on facial recognition.

Due to the unlawful use of those photos and violation of privacy, the company has already received high fines in several countries. This happened, for example, in France. The Italian privacy regulator imposed a fine of 20 million euros on the company in March. Fines from the British and Greek privacy watchdogs followed later.

Clearview AI. Source: CBS News