Facial Recognition Company Clearview AI Seeks Gov’t Deals Despite Regulatory Woes

The CEO of Clearview AI, the New York-based facial recognition company, has told Reuters that his goal this year is to ink deals with the United States government and expand his team by one-third.

Hoan Ton-That said that he will focus on closing deals with federal agencies and hire more engineers.

“We know that some of these agencies are seeing great success, but they are only at a small five-figure purchase or a six-figure purchase,” Ton-That said, referring to annual deal value. “Can we get a few of those to the seven-figure, maybe eight-figure purchases?”

For the first time, Ton-That revealed the name of the firm’s technology team. In the past, as competitors publicized the scientists on their staff, Clearview did not offer such details.

Ton-That said Pennsylvania-based computational physicist Terence Liu is the person behind some of Clearview’s algorithms.

In the AI sector, Clearview is seen as a high-profile developer of facial recognition. It sends authorities matches from a database of more than 10 billion photos that it finds online.

Still, Clearview has been criticized for alleged violations of privacy rules.

Last month, for the second time, Canada’s privacy regulators ordered Clearview to stop collecting images of residents and delete pictures it had gathered without their knowledge or consent.

See also: Clearview AI Ordered to Comply With Canada’s Privacy Rules

Doug Mitchell, an attorney for Clearview, told PYMNTS the company is a search engine that collects public data, the same as larger companies, including Google, which is permitted to operate in Canada.

Clearview has faced similar troubles in France.

Read more: Clearview AI to Stop Facial Recognition and Delete Data, Says French Regulator

In December, French privacy regulator Conseil Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés ordered Clearview to stop collecting and using images and personal data obtained through facial recognition and to delete this data.