Clearview AI Scraped 30 Billion Faces From the Internet Without Anyone's Permission

Clearview AI built a database of more than 30 billion human faces scraped from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and billions of other websites — without consent from any of the people pictured. It then sold access to police departments across the US and abroad. A New York Times investigation in 2020 exposed the company, sparking global outrage. Clearview was banned in Canada, Australia, the UK, Italy, and Greece. The US FTC penalized it. Privacy advocates called it the end of anonymity in public. Clearview's CEO argued that photos publicly posted online were fair game and that the tool helped catch criminals — which courts in multiple countries flatly rejected.