Police and Elites Secretly Used Controversial Facial Recognition App as Identification 'Superpower'

Clearview AI's facial recognition app was secretly used by police departments and wealthy, powerful people like billionaires and celebrities. They used it as a "superpower" for identification and digging up info on people.
Venture capitalist David Scalzo was one of Clearview's early investors, impressed by the app's ability to instantly identify faces. He believed it would become a common tool like Google.
Other early users of the app included Ashton Kutcher, John Catsimatidis, Doug Leone, and Joe Montana. Many were told to keep it quiet since it was in "stealth mode."
Clearview had trouble finding investors due to its founders' backgrounds and legal uncertainty around scraping photos without consent. But it cobbled together over $1 million from various sources.
Peter Thiel, who provided the initial $200k seed money, seemed barely aware he had invested when Scalzo demonstrated the app to him later. But it allowed Clearview to get off the ground.

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Posted 9/25/2023, 1:00:00 PM