Clearview AI: The End of Privacy?

Imagine walking down the sidewalk and some stranger being able to take a picture of you and getting back all your internet history, social media, images, places you have visited, and every detail of your online life. A search engine based on your face. Now stop imagining because it’s here and its called Clearview AI.

Clearview AI has been scraping your pictures from the internet and social media for years without anyone’s permission. Then using those images to train an AI. Now they say they can identify anyone with 99 percent accuracy with just 1 picture.

Clearview AI has at least 30 billion faces in there database. Not only can they scan the subject of a picture but also all the background faces as well. So there is a good chance your image is already in this database.

The Ultimate Surveillance Tool

Big tech already collects a ton about us but it was “kind of” isolated off onto their own platforms. But Clearview AI changes that. They are already working with government to become the ultimate surveillance tool. That is a scary thought. You might say you have nothing to hide? That you don’t care if government knows this stuff? But what happens when the government leadership changes or laws change. Then all the sudden your history is not acceptable? Change is the only constant in this world. Just look at history.

Imagine new people come into power and you try to board a train or a plane. Your face is scanned and all the sudden you can’t travel freely because you supported the wrong political party? Don’t believe me? That kind of junk is already happening in China today.

Or you walk into a store and the cameras in the store scan your face. Now you have limitations on what you can buy because your face was seen in the area of a protest earlier that day?

Clearview AI: Safety or Tyranny?

They claim its for our safety. That only law enforcement can access it. But what if its use expands beyond that. Can you really trust that it will just stay in law enforcement? And what happens if your the 1% that gets misidentified? There are lots of questions and none of the answers seem very reassuring.

It seems it’s already been misused. When a reporter named Kashmir Hill started trying to learn more about Clearview AI they put an alert on her face and told their clients to stop talking to her.

What Can We Do?

Well I think the genie is out of the bag and we can’t go back now. I also don’t expect government to help because they never let go of power only gain it. But if some people stood up and outlawed or put limits on this kind of technology that would be perfect.

But until then I think the best thing you or anyone else can do is to be conscience of your online activities and were your picture might show up when out of your house. The old rule of “Anything you put on the internet is there forever” applies more now then it ever has in history.

More Info

Want to learn more?

Kashmir Hill wrote a book called Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup’s Quest to End Privacy as We Know It  and talks about it in a podcast on The Verge.

Jimmy Evans talks about it on Tipping Point.

There are also endless stories in search engines.

Public copy cat’s have also started to pop up like PimEyes.

Affiliate links

Thanks for reading the post! Before you go I'm testing something new. You may see AI generated affiliate links below this text based on the post contents. If you see something intresting then thats awesome. If its way off topic then just ignore them haha. Thanks!