Clearview AI fights £7.5m UK privacy fine over scraped web photos

US tech firm Clearview AI is challenging a UK privacy watchdog ruling that found it breached GDPR rules by collecting and using images of UK residents scraped from the internet and social media. The Information Commissioner s Office (ICO) imposed a £7.5m fine on the US-based tech company in May 2022 and asked it to delete UK residents data after finding it had used images of people in the UK that were collected from social media and the web to create a global online database to be used for facial recognition. The ICO also ordered the AI company, which builds and sells a database of images used for facial recognition technology primarily for law enforcement and government agencies outside the UK, to stop scraping and using UK residents personal data. Clearview appealed the fine and enforcement notice, bringing legal proceedings to the First-Tier Tribunal in 2023 and arguing the data watchdog lacked power to enforce against a company operating in a different jurisdiction; the