In the Absence of Federal AI Laws, Privacy Regulators Lead the Way: Lessons From the Clearview Case
On December 18, 2024, the Supreme Court of British Columbia issued a decision in Clearview AI Inc. v. Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia, 2024 BCSC 2311. At its core, the case involved a challenge by a U.S.-based artificial intelligence (AI) company against a binding order from British Columbia’s privacy regulator. The company, Clearview AI, had amassed a large facial recognition database by scraping billions of publicly accessible images from the internet, many of which depicted individuals located in British Columbia, without obtaining their consent.
The decision is significant not only for its factual context, but for what . . . [more]