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12 Years Later: AI Pays for Dating App Photos
22 Apr
Summary
- AI company deleted 3 million OkCupid photos from 2014.
- Settlement reached after FTC investigation into data use.
- OkCupid's privacy policy was violated by the AI firm.

AI company Clarifai has deleted approximately 3 million profile photos sourced from the dating platform OkCupid in 2014. This action follows a settlement with the FTC, which had investigated the matter since 2019. The investigation was prompted by a 2019 report detailing Clarifai's creation of a facial recognition training database using OkCupid images, a move that contravened the dating service's privacy policy.
Court documents revealed that Clarifai's founder, Matthew Zeiler, had directly requested the data from OkCupid executives in 2014, seeking to build a service capable of identifying age, gender, and race. In connection with the settlement, OkCupid has been permanently barred by the FTC from making false claims about its data handling and privacy controls, a measure that FTC rules already mandate.