{"id":81789,"date":"2026-04-22T05:14:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T05:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/ai-company-deletes-the-3-million-okcupid-photos-it-used-for-facial-recognition-training\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T05:14:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T05:14:28","slug":"ai-company-deletes-the-3-million-okcupid-photos-it-used-for-facial-recognition-training","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/ai-company-deletes-the-3-million-okcupid-photos-it-used-for-facial-recognition-training\/","title":{"rendered":"AI company deletes the 3 million OKCupid photos it used for facial recognition training"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-article-body=\"true\">\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">When online platforms violate their own privacy policies to sell your photos, have no fear: They just might have to pay an undisclosed settlement fee 12 years later. (Who says justice is dead?) According to <em>Reuters<\/em>, AI company Clarifai says it has deleted 3 million profile photos taken from dating site OkCupid in 2014. It follows a settlement reached last month between the FTC and Match Group, OkCupid&#8217;s owner.<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">The Delaware-based Clarifai reportedly certified the data deletion to the FTC on April 7. The company also confirmed to US Representative Lori Trahan (D-MA) that it deleted any models that trained on the data. Clarifai told the representative&#8217;s office that it hadn&#8217;t shared the data with third parties.<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">The FTC opened the investigation in 2019, after <em>The New York Times<\/em> reported that Clarifai had built a training database using OkCupid dating profile photos. The behavior was a direct violation of OkCupid\u2019s privacy policy. Court documents reviewed by <em>Reuters<\/em> reveal that Clarifai asked OkCupid executives for the data in 2014. Apparently, they obliged.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"relative col-body mb-4\">\n<div class=\"relative\"><img alt=\"Five people sitting on stairs. Creepy boxes surround their faces, estimating age, race and gender.\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"885\" height=\"553\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"fig-image-round\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/ny\/api\/res\/1.2\/LyIer2Mp6mkII3TGAjsaYA--\/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTYwMA--\/https:\/\/d29szjachogqwa.cloudfront.net\/images\/user-uploaded\/imgi_198_image_10-mar-26-2024-09-54-42-5759-pm_2190.png\"\/><button aria-label=\"View larger image\" class=\"group absolute bottom-3 right-3 size-10 md:size-[50px] lg:inset-0 lg:size-full lg:bg-transparent\" data-ylk=\"elm:expand;itc:1;sec:image-lightbox;slk:lightbox-open;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;expand&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;image-lightbox&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;lightbox-open&quot;,&quot;yHasCommerce&quot;:false}\"><span class=\"absolute bottom-0 right-0 rounded-full bg-white p-3 opacity-100 shadow-elevation-3 transition-opacity duration-300 group-hover:block group-hover:opacity-100 md:p-[17px] lg:bottom-6 lg:right-6 lg:bg-white\/90 lg:p-5 lg:opacity-0 lg:shadow-none\"><svg viewbox=\"0 0 22 22\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"size-4 lg:size-6\" width=\"22\" height=\"22\"><path d=\"M12.372.92c0-.506.41-.916.915-.916L21 0l-.004 7.712a.917.917 0 0 1-1.832 0V3.183l-6.827 6.828-1.349-1.348 6.828-6.828h-4.529a.915.915 0 0 1-.915-.915M1.835 17.816l6.828-6.828 1.349 1.349-6.829 6.827h4.529a.915.915 0 0 1 0 1.831L0 21l.004-7.713a.916.916 0 0 1 1.831 0z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/button><dialog aria-label=\"common.MODAL_DIALOG_A11Y_LABEL\" aria-modal=\"true\" class=\"fixed inset-0 z-[4] size-full max-h-none max-w-none bg-white hidden\"\/><\/div><figcaption class=\"relative text-[0.875rem]\/[1.25rem] figure-caption mt-1 line-clamp-2 mt-2.5 md:mt-2 pr-2.5\">\n<div><span class=\"[&amp;_p]:inline\"><\/p>\n<p>Clarifai uses this creepy facial profiling example to sell its services.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><span> (Clarifai)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">&#8220;We&#8217;re \u2060collecting data now and just realized that OkCupid must have a HUGE amount of awesome data for this,&#8221; Clarifai founder Matthew Zeiler wrote in an email to OkCupid co-founder Maxwell Krohn. The AI startup used the dating site&#8217;s images to build a facial recognition service that can identify a person&#8217;s age, gender and race. (Another brilliant and totally ethical idea from Clarifai, tapping into unsecured city surveillance cameras without authorization, was reportedly shuttered.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">Zeiller suggested to <em>The New York Times<\/em> in 2019 that people needed to, well, get over it. &#8220;There has to be some level of trust with tech companies like Clarifai to put powerful technology to good use, and get comfortable with that,&#8221; the AI founder declared. Some of OkCupid&#8217;s founders were reportedly investors in Clarifai.<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">As part of the settlement, the FTC &#8220;permanently prohibited&#8221; OkCupid from misrepresenting its data collection and privacy controls. <em>TechCrunch<\/em> notes how strange it is to use that as a penalty, given that FTC rules already bar that behavior.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When online platforms violate their own privacy policies to sell your photos, have no fear: They just might have to pay an undisclosed settlement fee 12 years later. (Who says justice is dead?) According to Reuters, AI company Clarifai says it has deleted 3 million profile photos taken from dating site OkCupid in 2014. It [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":81790,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_daextam_enable_autolinks":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/okcupid_logo.svg_5176.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}