Clearview Is Now Saying It Can Identify People Based on Synthetic Facial Features ⇥ wired.com

Will Knight, Wired:

The company’s cofounder and CEO, Hoan Ton-That, tells WIRED that Clearview has now collected more than 10 billion images from across the web — more than three times as many as has been previously reported.

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Some of Clearview’s new technologies may spark further debate. Ton-That says it is developing new ways for police to find a person, including “deblur” and “mask removal” tools. The first takes a blurred image and sharpens it using machine learning to envision what a clearer picture would look like; the second tries to envision the covered part of a person’s face using machine learning models that fill in missing details of an image using a best guess based on statistical patterns found in other images.

I am stunned Clearview is allowed to remain in business, let alone continue to collect imagery and advance new features, given how invasive, infringing, and dangerous its technology is.

Sometimes, it makes sense to move first and wait for laws and policies to catch up. Facial recognition is not one of those times. And, to make matters worse, policymakers have barely gotten started in many jurisdictions. We are accelerating toward catastrophe and Clearview is leading the way.