The defense ministry of Ukraine recently started to work on projects involving the technology of Clearview AI. The facial recognition system is aimed to identify individuals under the assailant group deployed by the Russian government.
Clearview's Artificial Intelligence Facial Detection
The Clearview AI face recognition technology can determine the facial features of living people and the dead. The algorithm embedded in the program could also reconstruct the face of an identified person even if it were damaged due to factors such as assaults and bomb explosions.
Clearview enterprise relayed help to Ukraine by accessing a database of faces for free. The system works as a search engine that could go through various features of billions of individuals.
Clearview adviser Lee Wolosky explained that the Ukrainian authorities could easily analyze each of the identities of persons passing through their checkpoints and other preventative security measures through this harmless weapon.
The aid from Clearview was already planned immediately after Russia started invading past the borders of Ukraine this February.
After the attacks, Clearview chief executive Hoan Ton-That did not hesitate to send a letter to the Ukrainian body in Kyiv and offered assistance through their state-of-the-art facial recognition technology, DailyMail reports.
Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation previously announced several offers from other countries regarding technological aids. Among them was the US-based artificial intelligence company Clearview.
Despite the initial statement, the Ukrainian government did not release any comments yet regarding the upcoming use of the company's AI facial recognition.
Like Clearview, several other independent companies have pledged their assistance to the country in any way possible. In a previous report, Elon Musk's internet service Starlink already relayed their help through the additional installation of modules to maintain the broadband infrastructure throughout the country.
Ukraine's Harmless Weapon: Face Recognition Database
Clearview claims that their database stores over two billion images from Russia's social media service alone. This platform, also called the VKontakte, is the most widely-used communication in the country, and its usage has already exceeded the rate of other platforms such as Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook.
Tan-Thot said their technology is more effective than traditional fingerprint scanning and can even detect faces even if they are heavily damaged.
Clearview might have improved its systems after a previous study conducted by the US Department of Energy, titled "Effects of Postmortem Decomposition on Face Recognition," showed that facial decomposition heavily reduced the AI recognition efficacy.
A separate study published in the journal IEEE, titled "Automatic Face Recognition for Forensic Identification of Persons Deceased in Humanitarian Emergencies," led to a much more promising result of AI facial recognition compared to the previous analysis.
Ton-That said that the technology offered by Clearview opens a chance to reunite families from members that belong to the refugees. Moreover, the database could assist in relaying true information while debunking false news on Russia's own social media platforms.
The Clearview team expects that the AI technology will be deployed in other parts of the Ukraine government in the near future.
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