Vkontakte social network is going to sue SearchFace, a Russian startup that developed a technology that finds people online based on their photographs. Social network representatives claim the service is using personal data of its users without their consent.
SearchFace was launched in November 2018 and includes a neural network based on 500 million photographs of Vkontakte users. Vkontakte representatives claim that the service is using this data illegally and without permission. Any internet user can use the service to upload a photo of any person. The service will study the image using special algorithms and them retrieve links to the person’s alleged social media accounts rated by probability that the account belongs to the person in the photo.
Invest Foresight correspondent uploaded a photo of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and the website found 16 accounts that may be related to the head of the government. However, all the accounts were fake while Dmitry Medvedev’s actual Vkontakte account could not be retrieved by the service.
The service will not be able to process the photographs featuring several people and will simply reject them. It is also much better at finding people who are less known. For example, it took SearchFace one second to find the account of former Reebok marketing executive, Alexander Golofast, who created a recent scandalous advertising campaign.