Clarifai deletes 3 million photos that OkCupid provided to train facial recognition AI, report says
Clarifai has deleted 3 million photos it obtained from OkCupid to train its facial recognition AI following an FTC settlement. The images were originally shared in 2014, according to court documents, despite OkCupid’s privacy policies prohibiting such use.
AI platform Clarifai has deleted 3 million photos it says it obtained from OkCupid to train its facial recognition AI, according to reports. The company also deleted any models that were trained using that data.
According to the Federal Trade Commission’s investigation, Clarifai asked OkCupid — whose executives had invested in the company — to share data in 2014. The dating app then provided user-uploaded photos, along with other demographic and location data. Per OkCupid’s own privacy policies, this behavior should have been prohibited.
“We’re collecting data now and just realized that OKCupid must have a HUGE amount of awesome data for this,” Clarifai founder and CEO Matthew Zeiler wrote in an email to OkCupid co-founder Maxwell Krohn, according to court documents reviewed by Reuters.
FTC Investigation and Settlement
Although the data-sharing incident appears to have taken place about 12 years ago, the FTC did not open an investigation until 2019. The probe followed a New York Times article that reported Clarifai had used images from OkCupid to build an AI tool capable of estimating a person’s age, sex, and race based on their face.
Last month, the FTC and OkCupid, which is owned by Match Group, settled the lawsuit. At the time, OkCupid and Match Group did not admit to allegations that they deceived users by violating their own privacy policies. However, Clarifai’s confirmation that it deleted the data indicates the company did gain access to the photos.
The FTC also alleged that since 2014, Match Group and OkCupid deliberately concealed the data-sharing behavior and attempted to obstruct the agency’s investigation.
FTC Restrictions
While the FTC is not able to fine companies for this type of first-time offense, the agency declared that OkCupid and Match are “permanently prohibited from misrepresenting or assisting others in misrepresenting” the nature of their data collection and sharing. As a result, OkCupid and Match are barred from engaging in conduct that violates these requirements.
OkCupid and Clarifai did not immediately respond to requests for comment.