Clearview facial recognition searches double, database reaches 50B images

The number of facial recognition searches performed with Clearview AI by law enforcement officials has doubled over the past year, reaching 2 million. The company’s database of facial images for biometric comparison has also grown, reaching 50 billion in total, Clearview CEO Hoan Ton-That told Biometric Update in an email.

The database reached 40 billion images in November of last year, and Ton-That told the BBC that the company had been used for one million searches as of last March.

The company has been steadily expanding its portfolio of law enforcement clients, with a trial by Ecuador’s International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children and a dedicated Latin American sales team, and its focus on U.S. law enforcement yielding inclusion on the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace to sell its facial recognition to defense sector customers.

Clearview has also appointed several new executives, with Jai-Sun Lee joining as chief revenue officer, Jonathan Maroko taking the chief financial officer role and Amos Kyler the new chief technology officer.

Lee held several roles with Dataminr over a stint last nearly 9 years, most recently as VP of Platform Partnerships. Maroko was most recently interim CFO at Faraday Future, and has served as external CFO for various companies. Kyler was promoted to the CTO role after serving as Clearview’s head of engineering for the past three years.

The hirings and search growth signal a different trajectory than that suggested by attorneys when Clearview settled a consolidated class action by giving up a 23 percent stake, which plaintiffs said was preferable to bankrupting the company with legal fees on the way to a trial. The value of that stake appears to be rising.

Article Topics

biometric database  |  biometric matching  |  biometrics  |  Clearview AI  |  dataset  |  facial recognition