According to a statement from Hoan Ton-That, CEO of Clearview AI to Reuters, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense began using his company’s facial recognition technology on Saturday, March 12. Indeed, the U.S. startup has offered to help Ukraine discover Russian attackers, fight misinformation, reunite refugee families and identify the dead with its technology, which it is making available free of charge. Clearview AI says it has not done the same for Russia.

The American company Clearview AI has developed a facial recognition software whose database is based on the aspiration of photographs and videos publicly available on the Internet, which would have allowed it to collect more than 10 billion photos “without legal basis”.

By May 2021, a group of NGOs led by Privacy International had filed complaints against Clearview AI in France, Greece, Austria, Italy and the United Kingdom, and the CNIL gave it formal notice to comply with the GDPR. Italy and the UK fined it, while Sweden and Australia banned it.

Clearview AI in Ukraine

Also according to statements made by Clearview AI’s CEO to Reuters, when hostilities began with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he reportedly wrote to Kiev to offer help. He added that his company has more than 2 billion images from the Russian social network service VKontakte, out of a database of more than 10 billion photos in total. Lee Wolosky, a Clearview advisor and former diplomat under U.S. Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, said:

“Ukraine receives free access to Clearview AI’s powerful face search engine, allowing authorities to potentially screen persons of interest at checkpoints, among other uses.”

Hoan Ton-That stated:

“This database can help Ukraine identify the dead more easily than trying to match fingerprints, and works even if there is damage to the face.”

He also said facial recognition technology will be able to be used to reunite separated refugees with their families, identify Russian agents and combat false information. Ukraine has begun training in the technology, but for what purpose?

A dangerous technology

No existing facial recognition technology is 100% reliable, as the use of Clearview AI by American law enforcement agencies has demonstrated. Experts and observers question the wisdom of using it to identify Russian agents. Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project told Reuters:

“We’re going to see a technology with good intentions backfire and hurt the very people it’s supposed to protect. Once you introduce these systems and their associated databases into a war zone, you have no control over how they are used.”

For him, the use of Clearview AI to identify the dead is the only valid one. For his part, Hoan Ton-That said Clearview should never be used as the sole source of identification and that he would not want the technology to be used in violation of the Geneva Conventions, which created legal standards for humanitarian treatment during war. He added that, like other users, those in Ukraine have received training and must enter a case number and reason for a search before queries.

Translated from Ukraine : Clearview AI met sa technologie de reconnaissance faciale à disposition de Kiev