Clearview AI’s Dystopian Face Rec Tech Now Being Used to Identify Dead Russian Troops

Notorious U.S. facial recognition know-how from Clearview AI is now getting used to establish deceased troopers fallen on the battlefield.

In a latest interview with Reuters, Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov stated the army makes use of the tech to establish lifeless troopers after which sends alerts to the fallen combatant’s household. As a reminder, Clearview’s facial recognition system works by evaluating photographs of a topic in opposition to its database of billions of photographs scraped from the general public internet, together with social media networks. Specifically, Fedorov stated the army makes use of the app to discover a soldier’s social media account.

“As a courtesy to the mothers of those soldiers, we are disseminating this information over social media to at least let families know that they’ve lost their sons and to then enable them to come to collect their bodies,” Fedorov stated. In a darkish twist of modernity, the Ukrainian authorities has additionally created a web based Google Form the place Russian family can request to gather the stays of a lifeless soldier.

Fedorov took to Twitter late Wednesday, providing further particulars of its identification course of with out particularly naming Clearview. “​​A month ago, we all worked on FaceID and CRM systems to process calls for eServices,” Fedorov wrote. “Now, we work on automatic identification of occupiers’ corpses and autodial RU subscribers to tell the truth about the war.”

Clearview didn’t instantly reply to Gizmodo’s request for remark

The U.S. facial recognition agency reportedly started providing its know-how to Ukraine, freed from cost, earlier this month. At the time, Clearview executives steered its know-how could possibly be used to display screen vacationers passing by safety checkpoints and probably even assist reunite refugee households.

“What’s really fascinating is that it [facial recognition] could be a really big deterrent for potential infiltrators if they know that facial recognition is out there,” Clearview CEO Hoan Ton-That stated in an interview with NewsNation.

Though the specifics of Ukraine’s deceased soldier identification operation nonetheless stays largely shrouded in thriller, the observe has already drawn scrutiny from some privateness professional like Surveillance Technology Oversight Project Executive Director Albert Fox Cahn who fears the potential for misidentification.

“When facial recognition inevitably misidentifies the dead, it will mean heartbreak for the living,” Fox Cahn stated in a latest interview with Forbes. Advocacy teams like Privacy International, in the meantime, have accused Clearview of exploiting the battle for its personal profit.

“Whatever the intention, people in Ukraine are currently at their most vulnerable—offering to deploy controversial technologies that exploit personal data seems irresponsible and on the verge of exploiting people’s distress and despair,” Privacy International said in a statement. “As Clearview’s data collection has been found in violation of many countries’ privacy laws, this feels like trying to bandage a wound with an infected plaster.”

Recent reports from the Washington Post and elsewhere counsel Clearview has ambitions to increase its enterprise past regulation enforcement. Internally, the corporate claims its knowledge assortment system uploads 1.5 billion photographs monthly and will home a complete of 100 billion photographs in its database by the tip of 2022.