AI company deletes the 3 million OKCupid photos it used for facial recognition training
When online platforms violate their own privacy policies to sell your photos, fear not: They might just have to pay an undisclosed settlement fee 12 years later. (Who said justice was dead?) According to ReutersAI company Clarifai says it deleted 3 million profile photos taken on the dating site OkCupid in 2014. This follows a settlement reached last month between the FTC and Match Group, the owner of OkCupid.
Delaware-based Clarifai reportedly certified the data deletion to the FTC on April 7. The company also confirmed to U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan (D-MA) that it had removed all models trained on the data. Clarifai told the representative’s office that it did not share the data with third parties.
The FTC opened the investigation in 2019, after The New York Times reported that Clarifai built a training database using OkCupid dating profile photos. This behavior was a direct violation of OkCupid’s privacy policy. Court documents reviewed by Reuters reveal that Clarifai requested the data from OkCupid executives in 2014. Apparently, they agreed.
Clarifai uses this chilling example of facial profiling to sell its services.
(Clarifai)“We’re collecting data now and we just realized that OkCupid must have a HUGE amount of awesome data to do this,” Clarifai founder Matthew Zeiler wrote in an email to OkCupid co-founder Maxwell Krohn. The AI startup used images from the dating site to create a facial recognition service that can identify a person’s age, gender and race. (Another brilliant and completely ethical idea from Clarifai, operating unsecured city surveillance cameras without permission, was reportedly scrapped.)
Zeiller suggested The New York Times in 2019, people needed to get over it. “There needs to be a certain level of trust with technology companies like Clarifai to be able to put powerful technology to good use and feel comfortable with it,” said the AI founder. Some of OkCupid’s founders were reportedly investors in Clarifai.
As part of the settlement, the FTC “permanently prohibited” OkCupid from misrepresenting its data collection and privacy controls. TechCrunch notes how odd it is to use this as a penalty, given that FTC rules already prohibit this behavior.
