Clearview is a facial recognition company with a somewhat controversial record for its use of billions of facial images scraped from the internet, social media, and public records.

Clearview AI announced its win of the “Scalable Training Data Preparation Pipeline And Efficient Distributed Trainer For Deep Neural Networks In Facial Recognition” patent (U.S. Patent No. 11,443,553) issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The patented technology is able to create highly accurate, bias-free facial recognition algorithms from publicly available information. (Businesswire)

Most facial recognition technologies use standard celebrity datasets for training, which do not contain a representative sample of all demographics. By contrast, Clearview AI is able to create a data set that represents all demographics with its unique data preparation and distributed training algorithms.

 “Clearview AI’s mission is to reduce bias in technology, and as a person of mixed race this is highly important to me,” said Hoan Ton-That, Clearview AI’s CEO.

Clearview has applied for and won this patent with a view to prevent copying of facets of its facial recognition technology.

“These patents help protect us against a potential future competitor who would like to copy our facial recognition search engine, or our method for creating a highly accurate, bias-free facial recognition algorithm from large scale public internet datasets,” added Ton-That.

Earlier this year, Clearview AI was awarded U.S. patent 11,250,226, “Methods for Providing Information About a Person Based on Facial Recognition”, for the application of its highly accurate bias-free algorithm to search publicly available information from the open internet, creating the world’s first facial recognition search engine.

An editorial in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette today (Wednesday, September 28) claimed that “because very few laws or public policies guide the use of facial recognition software, mass surveillance using this technology endangers the right of privacy in general, and racial justice in particular.”

“Until appropriate safeguards are in place, and racial biases corrected — and maybe beyond — facial recognition should not be allowed in Pittsburgh,” the article said.

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