OkCupid gave 3 million dating-app photos to facial recognition firm, FTC says

“An OkCupid spokeswoman said Clarifai contacted the company in 2014 ‘about collaborating to determine if they could build unbiased AI and facial recognition technology’ and that the dating site ‘did not enter into any commercial agreement then and ha[s] no relationship with them now.’ She did not address whether Clarifai had gained access to OkCupid’s photos without its consent,” the Times wrote.

But even if they had no “commercial agreement,” Zeiler told the Times that his company gained access to user photos because some of OkCupid’s founders invested in Clarifai, the 2019 article said. “Clarifai used the images from OkCupid to build a service that could identify the age, sex and race of detected faces, Mr. Zeiler said,” according to the article, which added that “Mr. Zeiler said Clarifai would sell its facial recognition technology to foreign governments, military operations and police departments provided the circumstances were right.”

The FTC said in a complaint yesterday that OkCupid, which was purchased by Match.com in 2011, made “false and misleading claims” about how it used customer data. The complaint makes references to Humor Rainbow, the name of the company that created OkCupid.

“When OkCupid users inquired about OkCupid and the Data Recipient, Humor Rainbow reiterated its lack of involvement with the Data Recipient. Humor Rainbow stated that ‘any implication that OkCupid released users’ information to [the Data Recipient] is false,’” the FTC complaint said.

CEO asked OkCupid co-founder for data

The FTC complaint described how the data-sharing arrangement was made:

In September 2014, the CEO of Clarifai, Inc. e-mailed one of OkCupid’s founders requesting that Humor Rainbow give Clarifai, Inc. (i.e., the Data Recipient) access to large datasets of OkCupid photos. Despite not having any business relationship with Humor Rainbow, the Data Recipient sought Humor Rainbow’s assistance because each of OkCupid’s founders, including Humor Rainbow’s President and Match Group, LLC’s CEO, were financially invested in the Data Recipient.

In response to this request, Humor Rainbow gave the Data Recipient access to nearly three million OkCupid user photos. Humor Rainbow’s President and Chief Technology Officer were directly involved in facilitating the data transfer. In addition to user photos, Humor Rainbow shared other personal data with the Data Recipient, including each user’s demographic and location information.

Humor Rainbow never executed a formal agreement or set forth restrictions governing the Data Recipient’s access to, or use of, the OkCupid user data. The Data Recipient did not pay for the data and never provided any services to Humor Rainbow or on behalf of OkCupid.

The FTC said that under the proposed settlement: