Tuesday's patent filing covers Clearview's process for fast and lower-cost training of facial recognition. He replicated the results, gathered online photos and improved accuracy to 99% from 70%. Ton-That began developing facial recognition around 2015 after reading papers such as 'DeepFace' and 'FaceNet' published by scientists at Google, Facebook and top universities showing dramatic strides in the technology. “Clearview AI has a pattern of deception: the company has been publicly defending its mass surveillance by claiming it will only sell to law enforcement while privately pitching an expansion into finance, retail and entertainment,' said Jack Poulson, executive director of tech accountability group Tech Inquiry. Clearview also has won about $50,000 to research augmented reality glasses with facial recognition to secure Air Force base checkpoints.Ĭritics are alarmed as Clearview weighs entering new industries. agencies that have used Clearview, a government audit found last August. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Fish and Wildlife Service are among a dozen U.S. No known startup has ventured into the same gray area as Clearview, which raised around $37 million from investors and wants more now. Giant companies such as Alphabet's Google and Meta Platform's Facebook with the data to develop competing tools have retreated from facial recognition, citing societal concerns and the need for clarity from regulators.

Some lawmakers want it banned.ĭata protection authorities in at least four countries including Canada and France have said the photo collection broke privacy laws, and Clearview is battling lawsuits in the United States that could force it to change tactics. Though Clearview compares itself to Google Images search, detractors say it violates privacy norms and foreshadows more egregious surveillance. Police say Clearview's web search tool helps them find people outside those datasets. Matches from facial recognition tools used by law enforcement across China, India and many other countries typically come from more limited arrest or government ID databases. Results link to websites such as Flickr, Instagram and Getty Images, where captions or other details reveal more about subjects. Overall, the nearly 50-person, mostly remote company aims to hire 18 more this year, including adding five engineers to a team of 12, Ton-That said.Īmong its plans this year, Clearview will add enhancement tools to clean up search photos and potentially AI to generate younger and older depictions so that someday seniors could be matched to childhood photos.Ĭlearview has become one of the highest-profile developers of facial recognition over the last two years because it sends authorities matches from an ever-growing database of over 10 billion photos that it finds posted publicly on the internet. They are listed together on a patent application filed Tuesday.

Ton-That said Terence Liu is the Pennsylvania-based computational physicist behind some of Clearview's algorithms and its vice president of research.

While rivals have promoted their benches of scientists or published papers about breakthroughs, Clearview had stayed quiet - calling itself 'Made in the USA' but not offering details.

Ton-That also for the first time revealed a member of Clearview's technology team.

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