facial recognition technology company, Clearview AIasserts that Ukraine uses a powerful search engine in the war against Russia.
This was confirmed by the company’s executive president, Hoan Ton-That, in a letter addressed to the Reuters agency.
Based in the United States, Clearview AI has offered to uncover Russian aggressors, combat disinformation, and identify the dead.
One of the main uses given Ukraine is to identify people of interest at checkpoints.
Clearview claims to have more than 2 billion images from Russian social networking service VKontakte for Ukraine used for facial recognition.
In addition, the company has a total database with more than 10,000 million photos.
Ukraine is also hiring startups to identify the dead, including those with facial disfigurement.
Ton-It’s letter also says that Clearview’s technology can be used to reunite separated refugees with their families.
Critics of Clearview AI and the facial recognition it does in Ukraine
But not everyone thinks that Clearview AI is perfect or that its facial recognition will help in the fight against Ukraine.
Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Surveillance Project in New York, said reconnaissance could fail at checkpoints and in combat.
This mis-identification will lead to the death of civilians and the arrest of innocent people.
‘We will see well-meaning technology fail and harm the people it is supposed to help’said.
However, Clearview has stated that platforms other than its own should be used for identification.
They also stated that they did not want their technology to end up violating the legal standards of the Geneva Conventions.
In addition, Clearview AI faces numerous lawsuits in the US, UK and Australia.
The lawsuit is about alleged privacy rights when taking pictures from the web.
Social media giant Meta Platforms, which includes Facebook and Instagram, has demanded Clearview stop capturing their data.
Clearview claims that its data collection is similar to how the Google search engine works.
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