Founder of facial-rec controversy biz Clearview AI booted from board
(2025/04/10)
- Reference: 1744240997
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/04/09/clearview_founder_exceo_ousted/
- Source link:
Clearview AI has booted founder and former CEO Hoan Ton-That from its board, just weeks after he stepped down as president.
Hoan Ton-That confirmed his removal, which Forbes [1]reported was the result of a Tuesday shareholder vote, to The Register on Wednesday.
"I was unexpectedly removed from the Clearview AI board," Ton-That told us. Clearview declined to comment.
[2]
The upstart's co-CEO Hal Lambert, who now leads the firm alongside longtime exec Richard Schwartz, told Forbes shareholders voted to oust Ton-That as part of a shift in direction.
[3]
[4]
After [5]stepping down as CEO last December, apparently amid a struggle to bag major government contracts, Ton-That transitioned into the role of president, only to resign from that post in February.
He [6]resurfaced shortly after as CTO of Architect Capital, an investor known for backing high-risk ventures. With his board seat now gone, Ton-That has no official ties left to the surveillance outfit he co-founded in 2017.
Clearview AI's messy history under Ton-That
Ton-That's severance from Clearview comes after years of public-relations disasters for the biz, which has been under scrutiny since its existence [7]became public knowledge in 2020.
Clearview built a massive AI-powered facial-recognition database by scraping billions of publicly available images from across the internet, often without explicit consent. It was, and still is used, by law enforcement in some parts of the US, at least.
[8]
It aimed to offer a service that worked like this: Let's say you're a cop with a copy of a suspect's face from some security camera footage. You can run that face through Clearview's database of photos, and if there's a match, the biz will tell you which social media page it got the matching photo from, along with details scraped from it, so now you have a name and contact info for the person in that camera footage, allowing you to investigate them specifically.
It was sued multiple times for alleged privacy violations.
In one case settled last year, New York-based Clearview agreed to [9]a deal in which plaintiffs would only be recompensed if the biz floated on the stock market or was sold, with the filings suggesting that compensating "virtually everyone in the United States whose face appears on the internet" would be financially unworkable for the still-unprofitable biz.
[10]
It was also [11]fined €30.5 million by the Dutch Data Protection Authority last year. However, a similar [12]£7.5 million penalty from the UK's Information Commissioner's Office was thrown out in late 2023, after a tribunal ruled the British regulator lacked jurisdiction over Clearview's activities.
[13]TSA's airport facial-recog tech faces audit probe
[14]Cops love facial recognition, and withholding info on its use from the courts
[15]US police have run nearly 1M Clearview AI searches, says founder
[16]Leaked: List of police, govt, uni orgs in Clearview AI's facial-recognition trials
According to email exchanges and other information [17]obtained by Mother Jones , Ton-That at one point wanted to pitch Clearview's AI tools to US border security, believing his technology could help deny entry to migrants expressing anti-Trump sentiments online or showing "affinity for far-Left groups."
Lest you think Ton-That's ouster would serve to make Peter-Thiel-backed Clearview less of a target for privacy advocates and those worried about the misuse of artificial intelligence to target political opponents, or anyone with a particular political opinion, that doesn't appear to be the case.
Lambert, who is [18]described on his firm Point Bridge Capital's website as an active Republican "for over a decade," was responsible for the establishment of the [19]MAGA ETF , an exchange-traded fund that selects investments based on their alignment with conservative political values.
Lambert had expressed a desire to "take down these lefties" in emails obtained by Mother Jones, and has expressed [20]optimism that Clearview would find a home in the Trump administration's incarnations of various federal agencies.
"Under the Trump administration, we would hope to grow more than we were able to under the Biden administration," Lambert told Forbes earlier this year. Lambert will now be able to do so without Clearview's founder to weigh in on the company's future. ®
Speaking of AI executive drama …
Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke has [21]told all employees that "using AI effectively" is now a baseline expectation in their day-to-day roles. This was said in an internal memo leaked to the press and later shared in full by Lütke on X.
Lütke added AI usage questions would begin appearing in performance and peer reviews. Teams requesting additional headcount, he added, will first have to show why the work can't be done with AI instead.
"Before asking for more headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI," Lütke wrote. "We're all in on this."
Shopify staff likely saw this coming. After posting its first full-year profit in 2022, the biz [22]laid off 20 percent of its staff in mid-2023. In that memo, Lütke cited AI as part of the reason.
"We are at the dawn of the AI era and the new capabilities that are unlocked by that are unprecedented," Lutke said in 2023.
And also... USCIS, the US government's immigration application processing nerve-center, today [23]said it will start scanning foreigners' social media for signs of antisemitism, which may well lead to requests for visas and green cards being denied.
Get our [24]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2025/04/09/clearview-ais-founder-removed/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Z_dCazV_RFd2ktglDe5SkQAAApE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Z_dCazV_RFd2ktglDe5SkQAAApE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Z_dCazV_RFd2ktglDe5SkQAAApE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.aol.com/ceo-clearview-ai-startup-scraped-171909359.html
[6] https://www.wsj.com/articles/hoan-ton-that-pushed-facial-recognition-ai-to-new-limits-his-next-project-private-credit-34b72853
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/20/ai_roundup_clearview/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Z_dCazV_RFd2ktglDe5SkQAAApE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/14/clearview_ai_reaches_creative_settlement/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Z_dCazV_RFd2ktglDe5SkQAAApE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/03/clearview_ai_dutch_fine/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/17/ico_clearview_fine/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/03/tsa_facial_recognition_audit/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/07/cops_love_facial_recognition_and/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/28/us_police_clearview/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/29/in_brief_ai/
[17] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/clearview-ai-immigration-ice-fbi-surveillance-facial-recognition-hoan-ton-that-hal-lambert-trump/
[18] https://www.pointbridgecapital.com/about/hal-lambert-headshot/
[19] https://www.pointbridgecapital.com/etf/
[20] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2025/02/19/clearview-ai-ceo-resigns/
[21] https://x.com/tobi/status/1909231499448401946
[22] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/04/shopify_layoffs_profit/
[23] https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/dhs-to-begin-screening-aliens-social-media-activity-for-antisemitism
[24] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Hoan Ton-That confirmed his removal, which Forbes [1]reported was the result of a Tuesday shareholder vote, to The Register on Wednesday.
"I was unexpectedly removed from the Clearview AI board," Ton-That told us. Clearview declined to comment.
[2]
The upstart's co-CEO Hal Lambert, who now leads the firm alongside longtime exec Richard Schwartz, told Forbes shareholders voted to oust Ton-That as part of a shift in direction.
[3]
[4]
After [5]stepping down as CEO last December, apparently amid a struggle to bag major government contracts, Ton-That transitioned into the role of president, only to resign from that post in February.
He [6]resurfaced shortly after as CTO of Architect Capital, an investor known for backing high-risk ventures. With his board seat now gone, Ton-That has no official ties left to the surveillance outfit he co-founded in 2017.
Clearview AI's messy history under Ton-That
Ton-That's severance from Clearview comes after years of public-relations disasters for the biz, which has been under scrutiny since its existence [7]became public knowledge in 2020.
Clearview built a massive AI-powered facial-recognition database by scraping billions of publicly available images from across the internet, often without explicit consent. It was, and still is used, by law enforcement in some parts of the US, at least.
[8]
It aimed to offer a service that worked like this: Let's say you're a cop with a copy of a suspect's face from some security camera footage. You can run that face through Clearview's database of photos, and if there's a match, the biz will tell you which social media page it got the matching photo from, along with details scraped from it, so now you have a name and contact info for the person in that camera footage, allowing you to investigate them specifically.
It was sued multiple times for alleged privacy violations.
In one case settled last year, New York-based Clearview agreed to [9]a deal in which plaintiffs would only be recompensed if the biz floated on the stock market or was sold, with the filings suggesting that compensating "virtually everyone in the United States whose face appears on the internet" would be financially unworkable for the still-unprofitable biz.
[10]
It was also [11]fined €30.5 million by the Dutch Data Protection Authority last year. However, a similar [12]£7.5 million penalty from the UK's Information Commissioner's Office was thrown out in late 2023, after a tribunal ruled the British regulator lacked jurisdiction over Clearview's activities.
[13]TSA's airport facial-recog tech faces audit probe
[14]Cops love facial recognition, and withholding info on its use from the courts
[15]US police have run nearly 1M Clearview AI searches, says founder
[16]Leaked: List of police, govt, uni orgs in Clearview AI's facial-recognition trials
According to email exchanges and other information [17]obtained by Mother Jones , Ton-That at one point wanted to pitch Clearview's AI tools to US border security, believing his technology could help deny entry to migrants expressing anti-Trump sentiments online or showing "affinity for far-Left groups."
Lest you think Ton-That's ouster would serve to make Peter-Thiel-backed Clearview less of a target for privacy advocates and those worried about the misuse of artificial intelligence to target political opponents, or anyone with a particular political opinion, that doesn't appear to be the case.
Lambert, who is [18]described on his firm Point Bridge Capital's website as an active Republican "for over a decade," was responsible for the establishment of the [19]MAGA ETF , an exchange-traded fund that selects investments based on their alignment with conservative political values.
Lambert had expressed a desire to "take down these lefties" in emails obtained by Mother Jones, and has expressed [20]optimism that Clearview would find a home in the Trump administration's incarnations of various federal agencies.
"Under the Trump administration, we would hope to grow more than we were able to under the Biden administration," Lambert told Forbes earlier this year. Lambert will now be able to do so without Clearview's founder to weigh in on the company's future. ®
Speaking of AI executive drama …
Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke has [21]told all employees that "using AI effectively" is now a baseline expectation in their day-to-day roles. This was said in an internal memo leaked to the press and later shared in full by Lütke on X.
Lütke added AI usage questions would begin appearing in performance and peer reviews. Teams requesting additional headcount, he added, will first have to show why the work can't be done with AI instead.
"Before asking for more headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI," Lütke wrote. "We're all in on this."
Shopify staff likely saw this coming. After posting its first full-year profit in 2022, the biz [22]laid off 20 percent of its staff in mid-2023. In that memo, Lütke cited AI as part of the reason.
"We are at the dawn of the AI era and the new capabilities that are unlocked by that are unprecedented," Lutke said in 2023.
And also... USCIS, the US government's immigration application processing nerve-center, today [23]said it will start scanning foreigners' social media for signs of antisemitism, which may well lead to requests for visas and green cards being denied.
Get our [24]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2025/04/09/clearview-ais-founder-removed/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Z_dCazV_RFd2ktglDe5SkQAAApE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Z_dCazV_RFd2ktglDe5SkQAAApE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Z_dCazV_RFd2ktglDe5SkQAAApE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.aol.com/ceo-clearview-ai-startup-scraped-171909359.html
[6] https://www.wsj.com/articles/hoan-ton-that-pushed-facial-recognition-ai-to-new-limits-his-next-project-private-credit-34b72853
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/20/ai_roundup_clearview/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Z_dCazV_RFd2ktglDe5SkQAAApE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/14/clearview_ai_reaches_creative_settlement/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Z_dCazV_RFd2ktglDe5SkQAAApE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/03/clearview_ai_dutch_fine/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/17/ico_clearview_fine/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/03/tsa_facial_recognition_audit/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/07/cops_love_facial_recognition_and/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/28/us_police_clearview/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/29/in_brief_ai/
[17] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/clearview-ai-immigration-ice-fbi-surveillance-facial-recognition-hoan-ton-that-hal-lambert-trump/
[18] https://www.pointbridgecapital.com/about/hal-lambert-headshot/
[19] https://www.pointbridgecapital.com/etf/
[20] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2025/02/19/clearview-ai-ceo-resigns/
[21] https://x.com/tobi/status/1909231499448401946
[22] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/04/shopify_layoffs_profit/
[23] https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/dhs-to-begin-screening-aliens-social-media-activity-for-antisemitism
[24] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Now Add Shopfy to the list
Gene Cash
Well damn. That makes me very sad.
They were the only web shopping folks besides Amazon to have their shit together. They replaced some of the roll-your-own non-functional trash web shops.
Thin Entering Wedge
An_Old_Dog
Today , the USCIS is scanning for signs of anti-Semitism.
Next month , it may be scanning for any-and-all characteristics disliked by the current administration: anti-Nazism, "incorrect" political afilliations and tendencies, supporting equal rights, feminism, environmentalism, etc.
USCIS scanning foreigners' social media for signs of antisemitism
Anonymous Coward
Because only True Red White and Blue Americans get to accuse George Soros of everything from rigging elections to making your Hershey bar melt in your back pocket.
Now Add Shopfy to the list
Another company cheer leading because of sunk cost.
As for Clearview AI, there HAS to be more going on than meets the eye. Because someone as sociopathic as Ton-That, is definitely doing some very unsavory things out of the public eye, to get booted from what is essentially, a fascist supporting company. (Unwanted surveillance)
Very unsavory.