Lawyers have filed a class-action lawsuit against Clearview AI for scraping public pictures to create its facial recognition software.
Clearview AI has recently become infamous as a company enabling legal authorities to scan and match faces through its massive database consisting of billions of pictures.
However, the company has recently faced a lot of criticism after it was revealed that the company had scrapped billions of images from places like YouTube, Facebook and Google.
Google, Twitter and YouTube have filed a cease and desist order to Clearview AI.
In a recent interview, founder and CEO Hoan Ton-That commented that Clearview AI had not violated any laws. He argued that his rights to scrape the American sites were protected under the USA’s First Amendment, including his right to public information.
“The way we have built our system is to only take available information and index it that way,” he said, stating that Clearview AI’s legal counsel was in conversation with the tech giants.
Now, a lawsuit has been filed that will put this notion to the test. The suite, filled in New York, has been filed against Clearview AI, accusing it of breaking Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act.
When and how the suit will play out is still unclear as it is still early stages. So far, only a judged has been assigned and summonses have been sent to Clearview and CDW Government, according to TechCrunch.
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