The controversial facial recognition provider has scraped billions of images of people across the web for its system. Understandably, it caught the attention of regulators and rights groups from around the world.

In November 2021, the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) imposed a potential fine of just over £17 million on Clearview AI. Today’s announcement suggests Clearview AI got off relatively lightly.

John Edwards, UK Information Commissioner, said:

“Clearview AI Inc has collected multiple images of people all over the world, including in the UK, from a variety of websites and social media platforms, creating a database with more than 20 billion images.

The company not only enables identification of those people, but effectively monitors their behaviour and offers it as a commercial service. That is unacceptable.

That is why we have acted to protect people in the UK by both fining the company and issuing an enforcement notice.”

The enforcement notice requires Clearview AI to delete all facial recognition data.

UK-Australia joint investigation

A joint investigation by the UK’s ICO and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) was first launched in July 2020.

Angelene Falk, Australian Information Commissioner and Privacy Commissioner, commented:

“The joint investigation with the ICO has been highly valuable and demonstrates the benefits of data protection regulators collaborating to support effective and proactive regulation. 

The issues raised by Clearview AI’s business practices presented novel concerns in a number of jurisdictions. By partnering together, the OAIC and ICO have been able to contribute to an international position, and shape our global regulatory environment.”

Falk concluded that uploading an image to a social media site “does not unambiguously indicate agreement to collection of that image by an unknown third party for commercial purposes”.

The OAIC ordered Clearview AI to destroy the biometric data it collected of Australians.

“People expect that their personal information will be respected, regardless of where in the world their data is being used. That is why global companies need international enforcement. Working with colleagues around the world helped us take this action and protect people from such intrusive activity,” added Edwards.

“This international cooperation is essential to protect people’s privacy rights in 2022. That means working with regulators in other countries, as we did in this case with our Australian colleagues. And it means working with regulators in Europe, which is why I am meeting them in Brussels this week so we can collaborate to tackle global privacy harms.”

(Photo by quan le on Unsplash)

Related: Clearview AI agrees to restrict sales of its faceprint database

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Nuance gained renown for originally creating the backend of that little old virtual assistant called Siri (you might have heard of it?)

The company has since continued to focus on building its speech recognition capabilities and has a number of solutions which span particular industries such as healthcare to general omni-channel customer experience services.

Earlier this year, Microsoft decided Nuance is worth coughing up $19.7 billion for.

As such large deals often do, the proposed acquisition caught the eyes of several global regulators. In the case of the EU, it was referred to the Commission’s regulators on 16 November.

The regulator said on Tuesday that the proposed acquisition “would raise no competition concerns” within the bloc and that “Microsoft and Nuance offer very different products” after looking at potential horizontal overlaps between the companies’ transcription solutions.

Vertical links in the healthcare space were also analysed but it was determined that “competing transcription service providers in healthcare do not depend on Microsoft for cloud computing services” and that “transcription service providers in the healthcare sector are not particularly important users of cloud computing services”.

Furthermore, the regulator concluded:

• Microsoft-Nuance will continue to face stiff competition from rivals in the future.
• There’d be no ability/incentive to foreclose existing market solutions.
• Nuance can only use the data it collects for its own services.
• The data will not provide Microsoft with an advantage to shut out competing software providers.

The EU’s decision mirrors that of regulators in the US and Australia. However, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced its own investigation earlier this month.

When it announced the deal, Microsoft said that it aims to complete its acquisition by the end of 2021. The CMA is accepting comments until 10 January 2022 so it seems that Microsoft may have to hold out a bit longer.

(Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash)

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Nvidia has put in a $40 billion offer to acquire Cambridge-based Arm, which designs a large proportion of the chips that end up in devices.

“AI is the most powerful technology force of our time and has launched a new wave of computing,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, when the acquisition was announced.

“In the years ahead, trillions of computers running AI will create a new internet-of-things that is thousands of times larger than today’s internet-of-people. Our combination will create a company fabulously positioned for the age of AI.”

While the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority decided in August that the deal “raises serious competition concerns”, it’s taken until this week for the European Commission to launch its own investigation.

Both regulators are in agreement that Nvidia could make business very difficult for its competitors by charging higher royalties or withholding rights to some of Arm’s designs.

European Commission Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager, responsible for competition policy, said: 

“Semiconductors are everywhere in products and devices that we use every day as well as in infrastructure such as datacentres.

Whilst Arm and NVIDIA do not directly compete, Arm’s IP is an important input in products competing with those of NVIDIA, for example in datacentres, automotive, and in the Internet of Things.

Our analysis shows that the acquisition of Arm by NVIDIA could lead to restricted or degraded access to Arm’s IP, with distortive effects in many markets where semiconductors are used.

Our investigation aims to ensure that companies active in Europe continue having effective access to the technology that is necessary to produce state-of-the-art semiconductor products at competitive prices.”

The Commission says it will also investigate the potential impact of Arm’s R&D spending being refocused on products that are most profitable for Nvidia, at the detriment of competitors relying on Arm IP elsewhere.

Nvidia submitted commitments to the European Commission on 6 October 2021 to address some of the initial concerns, but the Commission deemed them insufficient.

“We are working closely with the European Commission through the regulatory process,” said an Nvidia spokesperson. “We look forward to the opportunity to address their initial concerns and continue demonstrating that the transaction will help to accelerate Arm and boost competition and innovation, including in the EU.”

In the UK, Nvidia has made several promises in a bid to woo regulators—including pledging to keep the business in the UK and hire more staff.

Nvidia also recently announced a new AI centre in Cambridge – home to an increasing number of leading startups in the field such as FiveAI, Prowler.io, Fetch.ai, and Darktrace – that features an Arm/Nvidia-based supercomputer, set to be one of the most powerful in the world. Nvidia says the centre demonstrates its commitment to the UK.

However, Arm founder Hermann Hauser recently warned that “surrendering the UK’s most powerful trade weapon to the US” would be “making Britain a US vassal state”.

The CMA, for its part, reports that it’s received a “substantial number” of concerns from Nvidia’s competitors. Some of Nvidia’s rivals have even offered to invest in Arm if it helps the company to remain independent.

The European Commission now has until 15 March 2022 to approve or reject the deal.

(Photo by Sara Kurfeß on Unsplash)

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