Leading facial recognition provider faces lawsuit

Clearview AI is facing a lawsuit from the state of Vermont over the company’s facial recognition app.

Vermont’s Attorney General has filed a lawsuit against the firm alleging that the app violates state privacy laws. The software identifies people by comparing photos to a database of billions of images scraped from social media.

It has been the subject of a New York Times investigation which prompted a US Senator to label the solution as a “chilling” privacy risk.

Vermont’s complaint alleges Clearview AI violates the state’s Consumer Protection Act by collecting facial recognition data of Vermont residents, including children, without their consent. It also alleges that the “screen scraping” Clearview AI uses to collect the data violates the state’s new Data Broker Law, which targets companies that collect and sell data on consumers.

“I am disturbed by this practice, particularly the practice of collecting and selling children’s facial recognition data,” Attorney General T.J. Donovan said in a statement. “This practice is unscrupulous, unethical and contrary to public policy.”