New reporting reveals that Toronto police officers deployed Clearview AI for months before Chief Mark Saunders knew of its use. The controversial facial recognition tool identifies individuals by scanning billions of pictures from the open web, including social media sites.
About the controversy, Citizen Lab senior researcher Chris Parsons told the Toronto Star: “This company allegedly has developed its entire facial recognition system by illegitimately if not illegally scraping images from the public internet.”

Hoan Ton-That, the founder of Clearview AI, tests the company’s app in New York on Jan. 10. AMR ALFIKY / THE NEW YORK TIMES