Ukraine starts using US startup facial recognition

O Ministry of Defense of Ukraine started, this Saturday (12), to use Clearview AI’s facial recognition technologythe company’s chief executive said after the US startup offered to uncover Russian attackers, fight disinformation and identify the dead.

THE Ukraine is getting free access to the Clearview AI face search engine, allowing authorities to screen people of interest at checkpoints, among other uses, added Lee Wolosky, a Clearview consultant and former diplomat to the presidents of the United States. Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Plans began to form after Russia invaded Ukraine and Clearview Chief Executive Hoan Ton-That sent a letter to Kiev offering assistance.

Clearview said it did not offer the technology to Russia and called its actions in Ukraine a “special operation”.

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

Earlier, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation said it was considering offers from US-based artificial intelligence companies such as Clearview. Many Western companies have pledged to help Ukraine by providing internet hardware, cybersecurity tools and other support.

The founder of Clearview said his startup had more than 2 billion images from Russian social media service VKontakte at your disposal, from a database of more than 10 billion photos in total.

This database can help Ukraine identify the dead more easily than trying to match fingerprints, and it works even if there is facial damage, Ton-That wrote. Research by the US Department of Energy found that decomposition reduced the technology’s effectiveness, while a 2021 conference paper showed promising results.

Ton-That’s letter also said that Clearview’s technology could be used to reunite refugees separated from their families, identify Russian agents and help the government debunk false war-related social media posts.

But the exact purpose for which Ukraine’s Defense Ministry is using the technology is unclear, said Ton-That, who expects other parts of Ukraine’s government to deploy Clearview in the coming days.

VKontakte’s imagery makes Clearview’s dataset more comprehensive than that of PimEyes, a publicly available image search engine that people use to identify individuals in war photos.

VKontakte did not immediately respond to a request for comment. US social media company Facebook, now Meta Platforms Inc FB.O, demanded that Clearview stop collecting its data.

identification errors

At least one critic says facial recognition can misidentify people at checkpoints and in battle. A mismatch can lead to the death of civilians, as well as wrongful arrests that have taken place in police use, revealed Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project in New York.

“We’re going to see well-meaning technology backfire and harm the people it’s supposed to help,” he said.

Ton-That said Clearview should never be used as the sole source of identification and that he would not want the technology used in violation of the Geneva Conventions, which created legal standards for humane treatment during the war.

Like other users, those in Ukraine are receiving training and are required to enter a case number and reason for a search before consultations, Ton-That said.

Clearview, which primarily sells to US law enforcement, is fighting lawsuits in the US accused of violating privacy rights by taking images from the web. Clearview claims its data collection is similar to how Google search works. Still, several countries, including the UK and Australia, have deemed their practices illegal.

Cahn described identifying the deceased as probably the least dangerous way to deploy the technology in war, but said that “once you introduce these systems and the associated databases to a war zone, you have no control over how it will look like.” used and misused. ”