Clearview AI Settles Privacy Lawsuit with 23% Stake for Affected Americans

Facial recognition company Clearview AI has entered into a novel class-action settlement that admits liability for intruding on people’s rights to privacy. Instead of asking them to bring cash, the company will offer a 23% share to the Americans whose facial images are stored by the firm.

Lawyers from Loevy + Loevy from Chicago stated, “These realities led the sides to seek a creative solution by obtaining a percentage of the value Clearview could achieve in the future for the class.”

Another company from New York, Clearview AI, scraped billions of photos from websites and social media, including Facebook and Instagram. These photos were used to establish a facial recognition app that is now used by thousands of police departments and other government departments. Legal actions were taken after the information of the company was published by the New York Times in 2020 and some of the cases were later consolidated into a class action in Chicago federal court.

It has proved that almost every American with a photo posted on a social media site could be a class member. If the company floats or is sold, any claimants who submit a claim form will have to share the proceeds of the sale. On the same note, the class could sell its interest with Clearview or receive 17% of Clearview’s sales revenue after two years.

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Legal Aspect

The lawyers for the plaintiffs will also be paid from the final sale or cash out but will not seek to get more than 39% of the class. This settlement is still subject to confirmation by Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman of the United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois.

Ms. Greer said, “If mass surveillance is harmful, the remedy should be stopping them from doing that, not paying pennies to the people who are harmed,”

This kind of legal remedy may appear strange, yet such scenarios are not without precedent. For instance, the agreement made in 1998 between the tobacco firms and the state attorneys general decreed that the firms should contribute huge amounts of money over the years and from the money, a fund for health care costs would be created.

Class-action lawyer Jay Edelson approves of “future stakes settlement,”, especially in cases that involve start-up companies which may not be financially capable. But he said there is some ick factor with this formulation of the settlement. Another critic of the settlement is Evan Greer, the Director of Fight for the Future, which is an organization that advocates for privacy rights on the internet.

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