Google Orders Facial Recognition Company Clearview AI to Halt Photo Scraping Practices

Following Twitter, Google and YouTube have issued cease-and-desist letters to Clearview AI, the startup behind a controversial facial recognition program utilized by over 600 police departments across North America. Clearview faced criticism earlier this year after The New York Times revealed that the company had been scraping billions of images from the internet to build its facial database.

Google specifically requested that Clearview stop scraping YouTube videos and delete any images already collected. In a recent interview with CBS This Morning, Clearview's CEO, Hoan Ton-That, indicated that the company plans to contest the cease-and-desist orders in court. He compared Clearview's image collection methods to Google’s search engine practices, stating, “Google can pull in information from all different websites. If it's public and out there, it could be in our database as well.” Ton-That argued that the company has a First Amendment right to access public information.

In contrast, Google stated, “YouTube's Terms of Service explicitly forbid collecting data that can be used to identify a person.” The company pointed out that Clearview had publicly acknowledged doing just that, which prompted their legal action. Additionally, Google challenged Ton-That's comparison by emphasizing that most websites want to be indexed by Google, which allows webmasters control over their information, including the option to opt-out. “Clearview secretly collected image data of individuals without their consent, violating our rules,” the statement highlighted.

If Clearview proceeds with its legal challenge, it may follow in the footsteps of hiQ Labs, a data analytics company that attempted to invoke the First Amendment in a lawsuit against LinkedIn for scraping publicly available data. Although hiQ ultimately lost its case, the discussion around the First Amendment and data scraping continues to evolve.

Currently, there are no federal laws regulating facial recognition technology, although some cities, such as San Francisco, have imposed partial bans. Google's legal actions against Clearview could prompt the government to address the regulation of this technology in the near future.