Startup 'Collecting Faces' From Social Media
b'
A New York City based startup is facing the wrath of some the world\\u2019s biggest tech companies due to the way it\\u2019s populating a database for its facial recognition product.
According to its website, Clearview AI\\u2019s mission is to enable law enforcement agencies to identify perpetrators and victims of crimes. It apparently does this by using a \\u201cresearch tool\\u201d that\\u2019s, essentially, a searchable database of photographic images. And they\\u2019ve been obtaining these images, reportedly, by scraping them from the web, including from social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.
The New York Times reported in late January that Twitter had contacted Clearview AI and demanded they stop \\u201ccollecting faces.\\u201d Now, according to Business Insider, Google and YouTube have joined Twitter in blasting Clearview AI for violating their policies.
These companies basically all employ language that says that individuals are forbidden from collecting information that\\u2019s then used to identify a person or, as Twitter explicitly says, \\u201cfor surveillance purposes.\\u201d
But the startup, whose legal team is certainly being kept busy, says that it is simply accessing publicly available information, which is a right it is afforded by the First Amendment.
BBC News says the startup has amassed more than 3 billion images from a variety of websites, and so far Clearview AI is being used by more than 600 law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and Homeland Security.
Download and listen to the audio version below and click here to subscribe to the Today in Manufacturing podcast.
'