50 billion photos. One facial recognition database.

What Clearview AI built

Clearview AI assembled the world's largest facial recognition database: 50 billion+ photos scraped from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and the open web. Upload a photo of anyone. Get back every public photo of that person, with source URLs. Used by law enforcement agencies over 2 million times.

CEO Hoan Ton-That acknowledged to the BBC that photos were taken "without users' knowledge." The system works on anyone: suspects, witnesses, bystanders, children in the background of someone else's photo.

Children are included

Children's faces on school Facebook Pages are public. They are scraped alongside everything else. A class photo posted on a school's public Page gives Clearview AI a clear, high-quality facial image of every child in that photo.

A single school photo creates a biometric record that can be matched across a lifetime. Facial recognition algorithms match faces as they age. A child photographed at age 6 on a school Facebook Page can be identified, tracked, and matched across decades. There is no mechanism for removal.

Australia's response

The Australian Information Commissioner investigated Clearview AI and found the company breached the Privacy Act 1988. Commissioner Angelene Falk described the practice as carrying:

"Significant risk of harm to individuals, including vulnerable groups such as children and victims of crime, whose images can be searched on Clearview AI's database." Angelene Falk, Australian Information Commissioner

The OAIC ordered Clearview AI to stop collecting Australian data and to delete all images previously collected. There is no evidence of compliance. The database grew from 30 billion to 50+ billion images after the order was issued.

Global fines, zero enforcement

• France (CNIL): €25.2 million
• Italy (Garante): €20 million
• Netherlands: €30.5 million
• Greece (Hellenic DPA): €20 million
• UK (ICO): £7.5 million

Total fines exceed €100 million. None collected. The company continues operating. It continues scraping. The fines are a cost that Clearview AI has decided not to pay, and no authority has forced payment.

Wrongful arrests

At least 8 Americans have been wrongfully arrested based on facial recognition misidentification. A Tennessee woman spent 5 months in jail after being matched to fraud committed more than 1,000 miles away from where she lived. The technology is not infallible. The consequences of its errors are severe.

Australian retailers too

This is not a distant, foreign problem. Bunnings and Kmart were found by the OAIC to have breached privacy law by using in-store facial recognition on Australian customers without adequate consent. The technology is already deployed in Australia, in places families visit every week.

Lifetime trackability

A child photographed at age 6 on a school Facebook Page can be tracked across decades. Facial recognition matches faces as they age. A kindergarten class photo and a university graduation photo can be linked by the same system. The children in these school Facebook photos had no say in the creation of their permanent biometric identity. There is no mechanism for removal from databases that refuse to comply with deletion orders.