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Image Credits:Nikos Pekiaridis/NurPhoto / Getty Images10:11 AM PDT · April 21, 2026
The AI level Clarifai deleted 3 cardinal photos that it says it got from OkCupid to bid its facial designation AI, according to Reuters. The institution besides deleted immoderate models that were trained utilizing that data.
Per the FTC’s investigation, Clarifai asked OkCupid — whose executives had invested successful the institution — to stock information successful 2014. The dating app past provided these user-uploaded photos, reports say, on with different demographic and determination data. Per OkCupid’s ain privateness policies, this behaviour should person been prohibited.
“We’re collecting information present and conscionable realized that OKCupid indispensable person a HUGE magnitude of awesome information for this,” Clarifai laminitis and CEO Matthew Zeiler wrote successful an email to OkCupid co-founder Maxwell Krohn, according to tribunal documents reviewed by Reuters.
Though this incidental appears to person taken spot 12 years ago, the FTC did not unfastened an investigation until 2019, erstwhile a New York Times article astir Clarifai mentioned that the institution had utilized images from OkCupid to physique an AI instrumentality that could estimation someone’s age, sex, and contention based connected their face.
The FTC and OkCupid, which is owned by Match Group, settled the lawsuit past month. At the time, OkCupid and Match Group did not admit to the allegations that it deceived users by violating its ain privateness policies, but Clarifai’s confirmation that it has deleted the information implies that the institution did so get entree to those photos. The FTC besides alleged that since 2014, Match Group and OkCupid deliberately concealed this behaviour and attempted to obstruct its investigation.
OkCupid and Clarifai did not instantly respond to TechCrunch’s requests for comment.
While the FTC is not capable to good companies for this benignant of first-time offense, the bureau declared that OkCupid and Match are “permanently prohibited from misrepresenting oregon assisting others successful misrepresenting” the quality of their information postulation and sharing. So, OkCupid and Match are prohibited from partaking successful these behaviors, which are already not allowed by the FTC.
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Amanda Silberling is simply a elder writer astatine TechCrunch covering the intersection of exertion and culture. She has besides written for publications similar Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast astir net culture, with subject fabrication writer Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked arsenic a grassroots organizer, depository educator, and movie festival coordinator. She holds a B.A. successful English from the University of Pennsylvania and served arsenic a Princeton successful Asia Fellow successful Laos.
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