Artificial intelligence scans 30 billion Facebook photos to create police database
The Internet is a digital space where users can find everything. Artificial Intelligence development companies are aware of this and use what is on the web to train their models. One in particular, Clearview AI, has focused on Some 30 billion photos posted on Facebook and other social networks.to create a facial recognition database for U.S. police departments.
The images used were made without the consent of the users, as confirmed by Hoan Ton-That, CEO of the firm. This has led to detractors of the project who consider the AI to be a “perpetual police” that monitors even people who have committed no crime.
Clearview AI claims its AI is capable of identifying those in the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack, child victims of sexual abuse, and helping to exonerate people wrongfully accused of crimes. However, critics comment that there are wrongful arrests fueled by flawed identifications made by facial recognition that could also occur with the new tool.
According to Ton-That, his company’s database has been used by U.S. law enforcement. almost a million times since its founding in 2017. It further details that, despite not having users’ consent, the “publicly available images are legally collected, just like any other search engine such as Google.”
For those who believe that AI breaches the privacy of Internet users, Ton-That mentions that. only law enforcement has access to the database “for post-crime investigations.” and which is not available to the general public.
The CEO advocates that every photo in the system “is a potential clue that could save a life, bring justice to a victim, prevent a misidentification, or exonerate an innocent person.”
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