CLEARVIEW AI - 20 million euro penalty

Clearview AI will have to put its hand in its pocket

After an unanswered formal notice, the CNIL (National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties) issued a 20 million euro penalty against Clearview AI on October 20. Specializing in facial recognition, Clearview offers face search software based on over 20 billion images. However, this method does not comply with the GDPR , as the American company collects its data, particularly images, from any website, even social networks. Today, the company has over 20 billion images in its software.

What's more, most of the people whose images are collected are completely unaware that they are concerned.

After having had quite a few complaints from several people about this subject, the CNIL (National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties) decided to open an investigation. Several breaches of the GDPR were therefore discovered by the CNIL (National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties) , namely:

• unlawful processing of personal data, since the data is collected without any legal basis;
• the lack of satisfactory and effective consideration of people's rights.

Following this, the CNIL (National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties) decided to issue a formal notice to Clearview AI on November 26 to stop collecting data located on French territory without legal basis and to make it easier for data subjects to exercise their rights.

Having received no response to this formal notice, the President of the CNIL (National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties) decided to proceed with the sanction.