The agreement is intended to assist the corporation that violates individuals’ privacy in avoiding bankruptcy.
According to a story by The New York Times, the controversial facial recognition business Clearview AI has reached an unprecedented settlement to a class action lawsuit. The corporation would offer a 23 percent part in its company to any American who was included in its database, rather than paying cash for the ownership stake. In the absence of the settlement, Clearview may be forced to declare bankruptcy, as stated in the court records.
The class action lawsuit may include you if you are a resident of the United States and have ever uploaded a photo of yourself on the internet for public viewing. According to the records filed in the court, the settlement might be worth at least fifty million dollars. However, it is still required to be approved by a federal judge.
The artificial intelligence company Clearview, which has billionaire Peter Thiel as a sponsor, claims to have more than 30 billion photos in its database. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security in the United States are among the thousands of law enforcement agencies that have access to these and can cross-reference them.
Shortly after its identity was revealed, Clearview was subjected to a number of lawsuits from various states, including Illinois, California, Virginia, New York, and other states. These complaints were eventually consolidated into a class action lawsuit that was filed in a federal court in Chicago. It was reported that the corporation’s reserves were being depleted as a result of the cost of the case, which compelled the company to look for innovative ways to settle the claim.
A windfall is not something you can expect to receive because the amount is rather little when compared to the enormous number of people who are likely to be on the database. According to the report, the only way that this would take place is if the company either went public or was acquired by another corporation. In the event that this takes place, attorneys would be entitled to a maximum of 39 percent of the compensation, which would indicate that the total amount may be lowered to approximately 30 million. In the event that around 110 million Americans were included in the database, each individual would receive approximately 27 cents.
In light of this, the issue arises as to whether or not it would be worth a little more than a quarter to witness the bankruptcy of one of the most eerie companies in the history of the world. To cite a short litany of the actions taken against it (in addition to the class action lawsuit filed in the United States):
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against it in the year 2020, and as part of the settlement, Clearview agreed to permanently discontinue sales of its biometric database to private corporations in the United States.
In 2022, Italy issued a fine of twenty million euros levied against the company and prohibited it from utilizing photographs of Italians within its database.
Several privacy organizations in Europe have lodged complaints against it, alleging that it violated privacy rules in the year 2021.
A fine of 7.55 million pounds was levied against it by the United Kingdom’s privacy watchdog, and it was ordered to remove data from any individual who resides in the United Kingdom.
The use of the LAPD’s software was prohibited in the year 2020.
Untargeted scraping of faces from the internet was prohibited by the European Union (EU) earlier this year, which severely hampered Clearview’s ability to conduct business in Europe.