UK Facial Recognition Ruling Could Spur Innovation

The U.K.’s data-privacy watchdog’s recent $10 million fine on facial recognition company Clearview AI Inc. could spur innovation in the space, including advancements in payments technology, as it “sets clearer ground rules for balancing software innovation with people’s right to privacy,” according to a report in The Wall Street Journal Wednesday (May 25).

The Information Commissioner’s Office alleged in its ruling that Clearview collected images of people without their consent, but experts say that fine won’t be enough to scare off innovators from using facial recognition. In fact, it could encourage them to push the boundaries of what’s possible.

“Clearview AI was operating well outside the bounds of what many AI practitioners are comfortable doing,” Jeremy Howard, co-founder of Fast.ai, an online service that provides resources for AI developers and researchers, told WSJ. “Knowing that such a use of personal imagery is being penalized is encouraging to those of us that want to build useful tools in an ethical way.”

Eric Schmidt, former chief executive of Alphabet Inc.’s Google and chair of the federal National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, said facial recognition is a special case of a technology that he expects to be “super-regulated.” Software tools designed to speed up disease detection and diagnosis require massive amounts of personal data, all of which comes through, he said.

“We need to agree on what other information should be so restricted,” while also giving people the opportunity to opt out of sharing their biometric data, Schmidt said.

Clearview AI has collected billions of facial images and personal information from Facebook, LinkedIn and other websites, which it uses to train its facial recognition software to identify people from face scans, the WSJ report said. The company allegedly collected more than 20 billion images of people without their approval.

Related: Oregon Sen. Wyden Urges FTC to Investigate ID.me for Facial Recognition Deception

Last week, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate whether identity verification services provider ID.me, which is used by federal and state agencies, made “multiple misleading statements” about its facial recognition use.

Wyden wrote a letter to the FTC along with U.S. Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J.; Edward J. Markey, D-Mass.; and Alex Padilla, D-Calif., pushing for the investigation into ID.me, alleging that the company has claimed in blog posts and public statements since at least June 2021 that its “one-to-one” facial recognition technology was superior to “one-to-many” facial recognition, in which a person’s photo is queried against a “digital lineup” of other people’s photos.