A system that searches a database of billions of facial images could help Ukraine uncover Russian infiltrators, fight misinformation and identify the dead, a company said.
Facial recognition company Clearview AI has offered its services to the Ukrainian government.
The company says it has a searchable database of 10 billion faces from across the web.
But the technology has previously drawn fines from data regulators.
“I am pleased to confirm that Clearview AI has made its breakthrough facial recognition technology available to Ukrainian officials to use during the crisis they are facing,” Chief Executive Hoan Ton-That told the BBC in a statement Explanation.
Clearview AI offered its services for free in a letter to the Ukrainian government, first reported by Reuters and available to the BBC.
It is said that a large part of his database of faces comes from Russian social media sites.
The letter claims that the company has more than two billion images from Vkontakte (VK), a social network sometimes dubbed the “Facebook of Russia.”
The breadth of its Russian coverage makes it broader than a publicly available competing technology, PimEyes, previously used to identify people in war photos, a Clearview AI consultant said.
In the letter, Mr. Ton-That cites a number of potential scenarios where the technology could be useful, including:
- Identify intruders by matching a photo of them or their ID card
- Identification of the dead without fingerprints
- Combating Misinformation
- Family reunification by identifying people without paperwork
Mr Ton-That said Ukraine started using the technology on Saturday.
The country’s Ministry of Defense has not yet responded to a BBC request for comment.
- Fixed faces with facial recognition are possible with a £17million fine
- The database company must remove snapshots taken in Australia
- Legality of online face harvesting challenged
Clearview AI’s technology has been criticized by data protection officials.
In November, the UK data protection regulator, the Information Commissioners Office (ICO), imposed a provisional fine of £17million on the company.
It was recently fined €20m (£16.8m) by Italian regulators after it was found to be using “biometric surveillance techniques” on people in the country.
And while its technology is being used by US law enforcement agencies, the company is facing lawsuits in America over its use of images collected from the Internet.
At least one critic said there was a risk that facial recognition could misidentify people at checkpoints.
Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project in New York, told Reuters it’s possible that “we’ll see well-intentioned technology backfire and hurt the very people it’s supposed to help.”
Mr. Ton-That added that Clearview AI should never be used as the sole source of identification.
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