Facial recognition, data harvesting and the end of privacy - Verdict

A New York Times investigation has catapulted Clearview AI, a US-based facial recognition (FR) company, into the center of the privacy debate. Clearview AI identifies individuals from non-consensually collected images, which threatens to eradicate individual privacy in its entirety. The company has built a database of over one billion images taken from social media, without user consent, and contrary to the websites' terms of use. The tool can identify any individual on the street from just one image thus obliterating public privacy. The revelations should propel swift regulatory action.