Clearview AI on track to win U.S. patent for facial recognition technology

Civil rights groups argue that facial recognition technology is error-prone, misidentifying women and minorities at higher rates than it does white men and sometimes leading to false arrests. Clearview AI has gotten the green light on a federal patent for its facial recognition technology -- an award that the company says is the first to cover a so-called "search engine for faces" that crawls the internet to find matches. Clearview's software -- which scrapes public images from social media to help law enforcement match images in government databases or surveillance footage -- has long faced fire from privacy advocates who say it uses people's faces without their knowledge or consent. Civil rights groups also argue that facial recognition technology is generally error-prone, misidentifying women and minorities at higher rates than it does white men and sometimes leading to false arrests.