Clearview AI reaches 'creative' settlement with privacy suit plaintiffs: A conditional IOU

Unable to afford a settlement with "virtually anyone in the United States whose face appears on the internet," data-scraping facial recognition firm Clearview AI has decided that an IOU for a chunk of the company's future value will have to do.  Under the terms of the settlement [PDF], which still needs final court approval, …

[MOH]

I fail to see how letting the company go bust from legal costs wouldn't have been a better solution?

They pay the price for scraping people's data, the product built from that data goes nowhere, seems like a win.

Oh. Except of course the lawyers bringing the class action suit would never get paid. Can't have that.

[Woodnag]

letting the company go bust

If Clearview is liquidated, the assets being sold include all that lovely PII.

[Brewster's Angle Grinder]

Re: letting the company go bust

IANAL Could you sue the buyer if they tried to use it?

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: letting the company go bust

You can file a suit over anything. And given the precedent, the suit would likely move forward. But would the groups and individuals that sued Clearview have the resources to pursue a buyer?

[heyrick]

Why didn't they simply say...

You have to pay everybody a dollar for the inconvenience...and erase all copies of the images held and any ancillary data inferred from them.

This current arrangement is like a "somebody might slap you on the wrist at some point in the future, maybe, but until then keep on profiting from all those images you just got sued over".

[Falmari]

Re: Why didn't they simply say...

@heyrick "Why didn't they simply say...You have to pay everybody a dollar for the inconvenience...and erase all copies of the images held and any ancillary data inferred from them."

Because the authors of the settlement filing are lawyers, the lawyers the filing said could ask to be awarded as much as 39.1% of the settlement fund in attorney fees.

Clearview AI were never going to agree to a settlement where they have to delete their database of images, no database to search no business. Now if there is no settlement then there is no big pay day for the lawyers.

But as we all know the only purpose of class actions is a big pay day for the lawyers. So it should come as no surprise that the only form of relief in the 'creative' settlement devised by the plaintiffs lawyers is a monetary fund from which the lawyers will eventually get a big pay day, leaving all other forms of relief* sought by the plaintiffs unaddressed.

'creative' settlement my arse, just another example of class action lawyers working in their own self interests instead of the best interests of their clients.

.

*127. Plaintiff and Class Members seek injunctive relief: (a) barring Defendants from any further use of Plaintiff’s and Class Members’ biometric identifiers and information; (b) barring Defendants from continuing to collect, capture or otherwise obtain Plaintiff’s and Class Member’s biometric identifiers and information; and (c) requiring Defendants to delete and destroy Plaintiff’s and Class Members’ biometric identifiers and information.

[Pascal Monett]

"Clearview was a startup company"

That made the wrong choice.

Ergo, it dies. That's capitalism.

Don't you agree with capitalism ?

[Missing Semicolon]

Ah

Somebody wants Clearview to exist.

[ecofeco]

Re: Ah

Eggs-actly. Along with a lot of other failed corps that should have died years ago.

Looking at you, $3-billion-loss-every-quarter, Uber. And don't try hide either, Boeing.

The list is long.

[spireite]

Lawyer 100lbs of flesh.....

Presumably the lawyers formulated this method because the full settlement all at once means they wouldn't get paid when Clearview goes tits-up as a result.

Personally, payment in full and lawyers not getting their flesh would be a win in my book!

[b1k3rdude]

Like others have said, how the F is this a win..?

I would have preferdcd that CV-ai get obliterated along with all thier data.

[Tron]

The start of a trend.

This could be an early example of novel software being regulated out of existence by the courts. That could become frequent, and perhaps even the norm.

Not sure there is much difference between this using photos of people, and AI LLMs doing it with text. So perhaps AI may be facing the final curtain a bit earlier than 2026.

[greenwood-IT]

Let me see...

"Yes officer, I was speeding to get to work. I can't afford to pay the fine right now, but if you let me keep on speeding every day, I'll pay it if I get a Christmas bonus". It may need rewording, but at least there's now legal presidency for my plea.

[EricB123]

A Brief Statement

WOW.

eom