New York Times reporter Kashmir Hill explores the challenges posed by facial recognition technology. She received a tip that a startup called Clearview AI claimed to be able to identify anyone from an image.
Hill: Facial recognition technology is a double-edged sword. It can be used to solve crimes, find murderers and rapists, but also to track down dissidents or to obtain information about porn actresses and reach them. The face is, essentially, the last bastion of privacy, she says, and it is key to linking people in the real world to what is known about them on the internet. It is very revealing that not being seen is an exclusive privilege of the powerful, she adds, noting that in China, being on a red list means being invisible to the surveillance system. The company has been fined or banned in several countries, but it continues to operate in the United States. Hill is suing OpenAI for using all of our articles without permission. She is very concerned about facial recognition combined with generative AI combined with facial recognition.