Ukraine has begun to use a facial recognition technology with Clearview AI software. With this technology it is possible to identify possible enemies arriving from Russia who may be infiltrators or people who died in the war, for example.
Although there is no more detailed information on how it will be used, it must be taken into account that the capacity of Clearview AI is immense: they have more than 10,000 million images of facesused to train your detection engine.
Ukraine has received the possibility of free access to the Clearview AI face search engine. Lee Wolosky, an adviser to Clearview and a former diplomat to US Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, told Reuters that this allows the authorities to investigate people at checkpointsfor example.
Anyway, there is a lot of controversy here and that is that this startup is being investigated for a possible violation of the privacy and data protection regulations in the European Union.
A very controversial tool
In the autumn of last year, the European Parliament called for a ban on the use of private facial recognition databases, including the controversial artificial intelligence system created by the US company Clearview and which was being used by some police forces in Europe.
In France, Clearview was ordered in December to delete the personal information it had collected and stop “illegal processing” of the data. Weeks before the company had faced similar decisions from the UK and Australia. Clearview has built its business by collecting photos of people from the web and social media and indexing them into a vast facial recognition database.
First it was the company that told Reuters that the Ukrainian defense minister started using this tool last Saturday. And it is that the company offered them free access. Even though it is striking that Ukraine is speaking very openly of many of the strategies pursued in technological terms during this conflict after the Russian invasion of his country, in this case, the ministry has not wanted to make any statements.
Sources close to the US company point out that the authorities can use this facial recognition to veto people at the different checkpoints. As explained by the US Department of Energy, Clearview’s technology could be used to reunite refugees separated from their families. Another capability of this tool is that it can help the government uncover false posts (something very common especially in times of war).