Report from PPC Land
In Brief – Clearview AI, the small US company that built a facial recognition database using images collected online, argued to the Court of Appeal in London that the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) lacks authority to enforce data protection law against it. Clearview says it falls outside the UK GDPR because it does not operate in the UK and serves only foreign government clients, which it says are exempt from GDPR enforcement. In 2022, the ICO ruled that Clearview AI violated the law and issued a penalty of £7.5 million, but the First-tier Tribunal overturned the ICO order in 2023, ruling that the regulator lacked jurisdiction. However, the Upper Tribunal partly reversed that decision in late 2025. The ICO and privacy advocates argue that although foreign states may benefit from state immunity, private contractors must demonstrate that they themselves exercise sovereign authority, which they consider to be highly unlikely for a company serving multiple governments. In the EU, five national privacy regulators took similar action against the company, but the company has reportedly not recognized their authority, complied with their decisions, or paid fines.
Context – Until OpenAI made Chat-GPT publicly available, Clearview AI was probably the most notorious AI startup. The small firm built facial recognition technology that outperformed tools from tech giants like IBM, Microsoft, and Google. Under immediate pressure from regulators globally, the company drastically pared back its business aspirations, eventually agreeing to limit sales to government authorities, notably law enforcement, and primarily in the US. Facial recognition used by law enforcement has bedeviled AI policy debates, pitting civil libertarians against national and public safety interests. The EU’s AI Act limits biometric AI monitoring but exempts many uses by security services, and a 2024 GAO report noted that many US agencies were accessing Clearview AI. Last year, Austrian data privacy group Nyob filed a criminal complaint against Clearview AI with Austrian law enforcement aiming to have company executives threatened with arrest in Europe.