Co-founder and CEO Hoan Ton-That trashed reports that Clearview AI, his controversial startup, was up for sale.

Clearview AI, the facial recognition startup that has often been in the cross-hairs of privacy advocates, intends to branch out beyond its beat of law enforcement and governments to banks and other private businesses, and is not looking to sell itself. (AP)

Refuting reports that emerged from a recent court filing and said Clearview was being sold, Clearview co-founder and CEO Hoan Ton-That told AP: “We don’t have any plans to sell the company.”

The minutes of a hearing held on March 17 in a Chicago federal court revealed that Clearview AI was “considering selling the app platform to other entities,” and that the “sale of Clearview’s app” would be discussed in detail later.

Ton-That went on to clarify that the company was contemplating a new line of business that would verify people’s identity using a “consent-based” approach, such ID checks being the “least controversial use case” of facial recognition.

However, Ton-That clarified that the new product would not involve its huge data base of 20 million images that were reserved for use by law enforcement.

“We’re really focused on law enforcement right now,” he said.

“When we gave this to law enforcement, we saw such amazing success right away where they could ID so many victims of crime or perpetrators of it that it was a kind of a no-brainer at that point to really focus on that kind of use case.”

It was reported in December that Clearview was near to being awarded a patent for a “search engine for faces” that can roam the internet to find matches.

The US Patent and Trademark Office had sent Clearview a “notice of allowance” that essentially grants the patent subject to payment of fees.

Related Story: Controversial AI Company Clearview To Nab Patent For “A Search Engine For Faces”

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