How Clearview AI unleashed a global dystopia

A young Australian tech entrepreneur is among the shadowy figures in a new book on the creeping privacy threat of facial recognition by artificial intelligence.

Sophie McBain

Oct 5, 2023 – 8.28am

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In November 2019, The New York Times journalist Kashmir Hill received a tip that seemed “too outrageous to be true”. Freddy Martinez, an analyst at Open the Government, a pro-transparency non-profit, had passed her a legal memo he had unearthed about a company called Clearview AI that claimed it could identify almost anyone based on a snapshot of their face.

Clearview had already sold its services to hundreds of police departments around the US but had tried to keep its existence secret.

New Statesman