Three provincial privacy watchdogs have ordered facial recognition company Clearview AI to stop collecting, using and disclosing images of people without consent. The privacy authorities of British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec are also requiring the U.S. firm to delete images and biometric data collected without permission from individuals. The binding orders made public Tuesday follow a joint investigation by the three provincial authorities with the office of federal privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien. The watchdogs found in February that Clearview AI's facial recognition technology resulted in mass surveillance of Canadians and violated federal and provincial laws governing personal information. They said the New York-based company's scraping of billions of images of people from across the internet to help police forces, financial institutions and other clients identify people was a clear breach of Canadians' privacy rights.

The facial recognition app Clearview AI is not welcome in Canada and the company that developed it should delete Canadians' faces from its database, the country's privacy commissioner said on Wednesday. "What Clearview does is mass surveillance, and it is illegal," Commissioner Daniel Therrien said at a news conference. He forcefully denounced the company as putting all of society "continually in a police lineup." Though the Canadian government does not have legal authority to enforce photo removal, the position -- the strongest one an individual country has taken against the company -- was clear: "This is completely unacceptable." Clearview scraped more than three billion photos from social media networks and other public websites in order to build a facial recognition app that is now used by over 2,400 U.S. law enforcement agencies, according to the company.

Artificial intelligence (AI) may provide great benefits for society but must be overseen rigorously to protect Canadians' privacy, the federal privacy watchdog says. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada said AI uses are based on individuals' personal information and can have serious consequences for privacy as AI models have the capability to analyze, infer and predict aspects of behaviour and interests. "Artificial intelligence has immense promise, but it must be implemented in ways that respect privacy, equality and other human rights," said Commissioner Daniel Therrien. "A rights-based approach will support innovation and the responsible development of artificial intelligence." A problem with the growing use of AI, though, explained McGill University's faculty of law professor Ignacio Cofone, is that people cannot opt out of data collection.

OTTAWA - Artificial intelligence must be regulated to protect Canadians' privacy and human rights, a federal watchdog says. In issuing new recommendations for regulating AI Thursday, Canada's privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien said he is calling for legislation to regulate the use and development of AI systems. Such legislation will help to reap the benefits of AI while upholding individuals' fundamental right to privacy, he said in a statement. Therrien said these changes should entrench privacy as a human right and a necessary element for the exercise of other fundamental rights. AI models analyze and try to predict aspects of human behaviour and interests that can be used to make automated decisions about people.