By: Ulises Rodriguez, Staff Reporter
With technology evolving each day, you have to begin to question when is too much. At this very exact moment, someone could be watching you beautifully wiping that mucus off your damn nose. Now, what if I were to tell you that anyone could access any information about you with just a click of a button?
As crazy as it sounds, a New York-based company named Clearview AI has developed a facial recognition software that has helped law enforcement find criminals. When news broke out about this software being used by law enforcement, there has been a split opinion on whether having this type of software should be made available for the public or not.
Now let’s place you in a scenario; let’s say you’re at the gym, shopping, or whatever millennials and Gen Z people do on their damn time. So, you’re distracted with whatever activity you’re doing and that fucking weirdo across from you winks at you. Now what they will do is take a photo of you and with just that, they will have access to your address, email, phone number, social media platforms, and anything available to them.
Some students at CSUDH have sickening concerns about this software.
“If this were an app I would sort of feel weird just knowing that people can know anything about me by just taking a picture of me, then you have to take into consideration the present stress technology already creates,” Reynaldo Gomez, a 21-year-old psychology major, said.
Llerania Chavez, a 22-year-old biology major, went as far as comparing it to social media apps that are commonly used by everyone, even YOU, the person reading this.
“I never knew [about Clearview AI], like I know Snapchat and Instagram have the filters that use facial recognition but this sounds super creepy”.
To sum things up, this software is going to make stalking easy, even fictional character Joe Goldberg from the Netflix hit show “You” will love.
The good news is the company in a public statement said, “Clearview’s app is NOT available to the public. While many people have advised us that a public version would be more profitable, we have rejected the idea”.
On the plus side, this company has the right idea with this software. If you think about it, if facial recognition were to be used only by law enforcement it could save lives. Such as finding criminals, missing people, and abducted kids.
Yes, it helps a lot but in the wrong hands this software could end up becoming a real issue. Like, who in the right mind would want to release this for public use so rapists, serial killers, kidnappers, and god knows what other types of people are out there that will benefit from this to cause havoc.
The thing that everyone needs to be thinking about now is whether other companies, who have their facial recognition system, are going to overstep that boundary and create a public app to get revenue from this. If big money is a possible outcome then the answer is yes.
For now, there is no need to worry as much about this software being publicly released. Just as long as you pretend to read that long user agreement and just click agree, you will sort of be safe. Companies are still selling personal information so that’s still fucking going on.
