ClearView AI Is Helping Ukraine Identify The Dead As Military Crisis Continues

ClearView AI is reportedly helping the Ukrainian government identify the dead as the military crisis in the country continues.

According to Global News (via Reuters), ClearView's AI-powered facial recognition tech is now being employed by Ukraine's ministry of defense. This was confirmed by ClearView CEO Hoan Ton-That recently, who also said that the embattled country has free access to the company's powerful facial search engine.

Ton-That was among the first to offer Ukraine some technological assistance shortly after the conflict began, via a letter sent to Kyiv. But when asked about the AI company's participation in their efforts, the Ukraine defense ministry has declined to comment.

They did, however, confirm that they were entertaining offers from various western tech companies in the wake of the crisis. Notably, the country has received satellites from StarLink courtesy of Elon Musk, who pledged to help restore Ukraine's internet.

ClearView's database is no small thing, however, and it might just be the thing that Ukraine needs in order to help identify their dead-specifically those who might be considered unrecognizable due to their fatal injuries.

As per the original report from Reuters, ClearView is using its database of roughly 10 billion photos to more easily identify the dead compared to just using methods like fingerprint identification. The company's tech is apparently effective enough that not even decomposition affected its results, as per a study published last year (via ieeexplore.ieee.org).

However, Ton-That made it clear that he doesn't want his company's technology to be used to violate the Geneva Convention's legal standards for humanitarian treatment during wartime.

How ClearView AI's Facial Recognition Technology Works

ClearView likely implements proprietary tech in its facial recognition services, but this kind of technology more or less works the same across all iterations. Here's how, courtesy of Interesting Engineering:

As per the video, all facial recognition technologies tend to follow three basic steps. First, a person's face is captured in either photo or video, whether they're by themselves or within a crowd. Then, the software takes note of so-called "nodal points" on the person's face, like the distance between the eyes, how wide the nose is, and perhaps how deep the eye sockets are.

All of the information provided by the nodal points are converted to create a person's unique facial signature. Then, this "signature" is compared to a database of known faces-a process that can happen in mere seconds and in real-time due to the insane processing power of AI.

However, it is not clear how ClearView's implementation of this technology remains effective even when scanning potentially disfigured (or decomposing) faces on the dead.

It is worth noting that a good portion of the dead in Ukraine's battlefield are civilians who were just caught in the crossfire-most of them just trying to flee the fighting, as indicated in this report by CBS News:

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Written by RJ Pierce