Photo app Ever used family photos to develop facial recognition without consent

Millions of people's private photos have been leveraged by the cloud photo service, Ever, to develop and sell facial recognition software without their consent says an exclusive report by NBC News. According to the report, Ever, which started in 2013 as a cloud-based app for storing and sharing photos, has recently started to pivot into a burgeoning field of facial recognition technology through its new arm, Ever AI. In order to train its software, which according to the company's web page, is capable of delivering'surveillance & monitoring, physical access control, and digital authentication,' it used the personal photos from its millions of its users without informing them first. According to the privacy policy and a statement from CEO of Ever, Doug Aley, the company does not distribute users' photos to third parties, but does use them to instruct its algorithm. Specifically, it leverages a facial recognition feature built into the Ever service which allows users to group photos of the same people by scanning their face.