Is this venture too ambitious or is it just straight-up problematic? Regardless of the potential privacy risks, we can all admit that this company has given itself a high goal to achieve. In a December 2021 financial presentation for its investors, facial recognition company Clearview AI announced that it aims to collect 100 billion photos to identify every human on Earth.
While this announcement seems just a motivator for investors to provide funding for the company, the presentation claimed that Clearview already has 10 billion images and is adding 1.5 billion images a month.
How did the company get these images? Well, according to the Washington Post, it’s all thanks to social networks. "Clearview has built its database by taking images from social networks and other online sources without the consent of the websites or the people who were photographed. Facebook, Google, Twitter, and YouTube have demanded the company stop taking photos from their sites and delete any that were previously taken. Clearview has argued its data collection is protected by the First Amendment," the Post detailed. Yikes.
Image credit: Wikimedia commons
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