In the UK, Clearview AI will have to pay a fine of 8.8 million euros for having siphoned the portraits of British users on the Internet. He will also have to delete them from his huge database.
Governments make life difficult for Clearview AI, and that’s good. In the United Kingdom, the American company specializing in facial recognition was fined more than 7.5 million pounds sterling (8.8 million euros) for having collected the facial images of people in Great Britain from the web and social networks.
In addition to the fine, Clearview AI will have to get rid of its database of British faces. “Given the high number of UK internet and social media users, Clearview AI’s database is likely to include a substantial amount of data from UK residents, which has been collected without their knowledge.said the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), Britain’s data watchdog. Although Clearview AI no longer offers its services to UK organisations, the company has customers in other countries, so the company still uses the personal data of UK residents.”.
An amount of 17 million pounds previously mentioned
The organization also estimates that the company has illegally collected more than 20 billion images of people’s faces around the world to create an online global database for facial recognition. The British authority announced in November 2021 its intention to impose a fine of more than 17 million pounds sterling on the company as part of a joint investigation with its Australian colleague. The final amount of the fine is therefore well below expectations, pending the publication of the investigation report.
In France, in December 2021, the Cnil gave the company Clearview AI formal notice to cease the collection and use of data from people on French territory and to delete this information within two months. But these setbacks do not prevent the company from inflating its database. She estimates that she can reach 100 billion portraits by February 2023.